Chicago Tea Garden

Smoky,powerful Keemun. Good for multiple infusions. Fine with breakfast, but I think it is best on its own. Wonderful.

Oh man. My first sips, but already this is amazing. Very smoky. Need to spend more time before doing a proper rating.

Tried this in the Hong Kong tea expo. Good, Taiwanese flavours. Clean without the nasty grassy notes. A bit expensive for what it is.

Really interesting. Overall very light, but there are some very strong floral notes in there. Some sips are sweet. The aftertaste is somehow dry on the tongue, reminiscent of mint.

This tastes like a very light rock oolong with some slight floral overtones. The body has a very nutty taste, but as others have noted, the aftertaste is sweet and not at all bitter.

After tasting all three, I think that I’d currently rank all three varieties:

1. Pure
2. Dark
3. Aromatic

But this is subject to change, because I plan to give more thought to these reviews the second time around.

Very delicious, but it seems to be lacking something. When I try it again, I’ll give a more detailed review

Sweet, buttery, slightly floral taste that is delicious!

Before I drink enough to really get into this tea… did anyone notice that the packaging they got from the steepster select sale was not the listed packaging?
I’m not usually that suspicious… but I was really looking forward to the black box of tasty doom.

This brewed up to a nice pale lemon color with a very distinctive, fruity aroma that reminds me of a first flush Darjeeling. The main taste is just basic oolong with a muscatel kick. There are moments when a buttery aspect emerges, but that is fleeting. I’m drinking this in anticipation of the two green oolongs I ordered from Golden Moon – Coconut Pouchong and Sugar Caramel Oolong – but this is a good sub for now.
Overall this is a little more vegetal than I truly enjoy in my teas, but as long as the tea is drank hot that aspect doesn’t bother me as much.

I was debating which tea to have tonight when I saw teafreak post a review of this one…which sounded pretty good to me! I think I infused it a bit too long tonight, I’m getting a heavy vegetal experience that I’m not digging. I think I’m going to try another tea. I’ll keep the rating on this one though because it was definitely user error tonight.

Many thanks to threewhales for the chance to try this tea.

I am a bit apprehensive because I’ve had more poor experiences than good experiences with green oolongs. The smell of the dry leaf is slightly vegetal and sweet, but not off-putting. I’m following the suggested prep of boiling water for 1 minute.

The tea brews up a very light yellow hue with a definite “clean” vegetal smell. The taste is very light and smooth. I’m not picking up a lot of the vegetal tastes, which is a really good thing in my opinion. There is a slight buttery aspect that I am really enjoying. Only time (and cooling) will tell if I truly like this oolong. The rating may change.

This tea was just fine. It doesn’t have the complexity I’ve come to expect in high-quality oolongs. It’s light, green, and sort of flat. I agree that this would be tasty with food.

Very delicious, light, floral, fragrant, with a slightly astringent aftertaste.

Quite pleasant. The aroma is toasty and the taste is very light and slightly fruity. I might try a longer steeping time to make this a little less light.

Steeped at a hotter temperature than last time. Same steep time. More flavor is apparent. Sweeter and darker. Can’t name the tastes however.

Darker brew, smoky flavor, neither sweet nor bitter.

There are a hanful of ‘iron Goddess’ Oolong’s out there, all of which are good teas. It’s almost hard to go wrong. This one is somewhere in the middle of the ones I’ve tried.

This time, there was a distint milky taste. Not as present as a milky oolong, but definite. More so as the tea cooled.

3rd steep. Fruity taste appears

Compared to Zealong Pure, a darker brew, a little more floral aroma and a slight astringent taste, but still very pleasant.

A very clean, very smooth oolong aroma and taste. Deserves the pure name. From the zealong web site, it requires a little more tea for the water volume, and many steeps should be possible.

This is a really interesting tea. I’ve had a lot of tie guan yins, and this is by far the greenest one I’ve had. It was… just very green. I thought I didn’t like it, but then I kept going back to it over and over again, so I guess I did like it! Probably not worth the money, but I’m glad I tried it.