Luthien Send Message

Another disappointing flavoured tea. The base tea seems to be a pretty standard Chinese oolong, and that’s mostly what you can taste, with just a very slight zing of ginger at the end. The used leaves had a beautiful warm, tingly ginger smell to them; I wish that’s how the tea tasted, too.

This is a perfect Taiwan oolong, smooth and buttery with a lovely floral aroma you can smell from some distance. A really good Taiwan oolong is my favourite sort of tea, and I think this might be the very best I’ve had. Fabulous, fabulous tea.

After the success of yesterday’s Pineapple Oolong, I was cautiously hopeful about this one – and it didn’t disappoint all that much. The aroma is great, but the flavour, which is more along the lines of rock melon/honeydew melon rather than watermelon, is more subtle and doesn’t blend quite as well with the oolong tea as the pineapple did. Still not bad at all.

A very good high grade Formosa oolong. I steeped this for only one minute to begin with, as recommended, but the flavour works better – for me, anyway – if it’s infused for several minutes. This tea has a beautiful smooth, almost milky flavour, with some lovely floral notes. It reminds me a lot of my favourite Gin Shan Creme Oolong from teas.com.au, though this one is slightly milder all round.

The honey and pear are mostly in the aroma, and just add an accent to the roasted flavour of the houjicha. This actually works pretty well, and I was really liking this tea by the time I got to the bottom of the cup.

Still the best spicy green I’ve found. Lots of cinnamon, but everything else comes through in the aftertaste.

I was pretty sure that this dragonwell is the same as the one I used to get from Teas & Tisanes, but I’m a bit disappointed with my first cup of this one. It’s not nearly as subtle as the dragonwell from The Tea Centre that I had the other day, but it’s also lacking in the strength of flavour that I used to get from the Teas & Tisanes dragonwell. I think I’ll have another go at brewing this one, maybe steeping a fraction longer – this time I steeped for two minutes at 70C – before making up my mind about it.

Brews up into a pale pink-ish brown liquor. It’s slightly sweet and sort of mildly tangy, so I suppose it delivers the promised flavour, but it’s leaving me pretty underwhelmed. Steeped for two minutes at 85C.

Mmmm, lemon myrtle.