My second oolong! My first one was Vanilla Oolong, which I did not like one bit due to the buttery/milky taste. I was kind of afraid this would be the same since it was a DT vanilla blend, but it smelled SO good in the store that I couldn’t resist a 12g bag to sample.
The aroma of this tea is to die for. It is the best tea scent I’ve ever smelled, hands down. Rich, sweet vanilla with a slight hint of sophisticated orchid. This made my husband say “See, this is why Davids Tea should start making scented candles or something!” as the tea was steeping.
After steeping it’s a pale yellow shade. The hot sips are surpisingly watery. I don’t taste any tea here, although I’m new to oolong, so maybe it’s not a “slap in your face” tea. I tasted vanilla (like vanilla bean ice cream, as others mentioned, without that cloying milkiness of Vanilla Oolong). It was just okay. After this one cools a little, it’s much better. The orchid flavour comes out a little more, although I’d say it’s 85:15 vanilla/orchid ratio. Oddly enough, I struggled to taste the orchid while the mister took a sip and exclaimed “wow, you can really taste flowers!”. So it’s very possible that there’s some sort of weird taste bud variance at play here.
Next time I’d steep this for longer and do a solid 5 minutes instead of 4 to see if that resulted in stronger flavour.
Overall, this is a really smooth, easy drinking tea with a very beautiful scent. It’s not a tea that’ll slap you in the face with flavour, but the flavour that is there sure is good.
195 °F / 90 °C
4 min, 0 sec
