Lychee Oolong

Fresh lychee in a cup!

The oolong base is very light and green tasting and subtlely (and tastily) floral, leaving the lychee to be the main focus. Sometimes lychee can be a little perfumey or soapy, but this one is most definitely not. The lychee itself was very sweet, fruity, and clean tasting and definitely lychee. I got three really good steeps out of this, and a fairly decent fourth.

The whole cup just reaffirms my love for lychees, and lychees and green tasting teas together. I really don’t know if this is a winter cup, but I could definitely drink this all summer long. Yum.

Thanks for the cup Short Sorceress.

Definitely lychee in a cup—clean, refreshing, with that “firmer than a grape and cleaner tasting too” flavor of fresh juicy lychees. Pretty sure I like the Strawberry Oolong more just because I love floral strawberry flavor (and it’s kind of hard to find in flavored teas—usually it’s the tarter kind), but this feels as close to eating a lychee as you could possibly get in a tea (it even leaves the mouthfeel, yum). I bet when it’s super hot this summer, coldsteeped this could save me.

Simple tea, simple pleasures.

Yesterday, I bought high heeled purple suede sandals… Sounds trivial I know, but it’s a little pleasure that made me really, really happy.

This tea is also a little pleasure that makes me really, really happy.

It’s pure plump juicy lychee with buttery and sweet floral notes. I’ve got no fancy description for it, this is just what it’s supposed to be, and it’s fantastic! (And so are my new shoes!!!)

Lychee!! I love lychee! The aroma of this tea is intoxicating. As the dark green leaves unfurled, the scent hit me in the face once again! I knew it was love. The liquor is a nice bright yellow color. The wet leaves are pretty and medium large sized. A little goes a long way. Upon tasting it, I tasted the lychee Ive been missing this whole time. It is very sweet and juicy and has a nice green, earthy and floral tone as I sip more and more. I steeped this about 4 times, and the lychee flavor became lighter and the florals became stronger.. :)

Very excellent blend! I am very pleased and impressed.

Since I’m nearly done with my turn with the TTB I’m back to working through the teas from my epic swap with JustJames. This is the last of the Butiki teas that he sent me.

It has been a long time since I’ve had lychee, it just isn’t something easy to come by where I’m currently living, unless I want to buy them canned at the asian market, but I really enjoyed eating them on the rare occasion I could find them fresh.

I was really excited to see this tea make an appearance in our epic swap and it is such a wonderful tea. The scent of lychee hits you immediately and pairs perfectly with the floral oolong used as a base. The lychee isn’t immediately present in the flavor, I notice it more at the end of each sip, lending its sweetness to the floral oolong.

I wish I hadn’t saved this one for last, it would have made a great summer tea.

I think I found one way to wean myself off of sugar yet continue drinking tea. Just buy a whole bunch of tea form Stacy. Just drink butiki oolongs until I no longer feel the need for sugar, or as much sugar.

You really don’t need sugar in this one, and if I say that, you better believe it. I’m usually the kind of girl you ask “you want tea (or coffee) with your sugar?” Or… “Let me just sprinkle some coffee on your sugar bowl there”. I used to get tease like that a lot. I still do. Really, I don’t have a sweet tooth. I do not eat any desserts, almost ever, with the exception of ice cream. I have no idea where the need to sugar everything to death comes from. And it’s gotten so bad where if I don’t add any sugar, well, stuff is just flavourless. Like when you decide to no longer salt your food (assuming you cook from scratch, otherwise you take in added salt from everywhere) and find it bland.

This tea, and I’m on the second steep, doesn’t benefit from sugar almost at all. Weird, right? Sugar just makes it sweet, really, but doesn’t contribute to the flavour an awful lot.

1 tsp for 8 oz, 180 F results in a clear pale yellow liquid, quite fragrant. There are floral notes in there, to me it smells faintly of jasmine. I hope I don’t end up calling every floral note jasmine, but this smells like jasmine just a wee bit in the back. Really really long aftertaste. The fruit just stays with you. You can have minutes go buy between sips (if you can manage that!) and still have the fruit with you.

I find the second steep stronger even though i didn’t increase the steep time (thank goodness?) and I think there is a bit less fruit and more … other stuff. I mean, this stuff is not juice, it’s tea. So don’t be expecting a lychee martini base or anything.

I’m only beginning my oolong experience but I’m glad to have a good starting point.

I’m late at tasting all my samples kindly sent by justjames
I decided to spend more time with teas this afternoon and I am now with 2 cups in front of me, including this lychee Oolong.

J’ai deux amours…mon Pays et Paris as Josephine Baker sang…yes of course even if for me Paris is already IN my country, it makes things easier…but I have 2 other loves, much material : Raspberry and Lychee !

Unfortunately it is rare to find fresh lychees (we write litchi in French)in our supermarkets, we need to go to special Exotic markets.
Having said that I am so lazy and so impatient to eat them, I just hate to take the shells off…even if I have to recognize nothing compares a fresh lychee.So this is a wonderful fruit I rarely eat as fresh fruit.

I wanted to taste this tea for ages and here I am thanks to justjames
I love it, I was sure I would and I do love it.This is fresh lychee for sure combined with a mellow Oolong with a hint of flowery taste. It’s gorgeous.My big mug is already finished.
A very very elegant tea.

Between this oolong and the peach oolong, there must be something wrong with my taste buds. I LOVED EVER SO MUCH the strawberry oolong, but these lychee and peach flavourings give me a headache for some reason. The oolong quality is quite good, but it just isn’t working out for me. I have a sample’s worth of both Peach and Lychee Oolong that might need to find a new home.

Actually, I’ll just cold steep what I have left of both and see if that makes it easier to drink. To be continued…

Lychee! Lychee! Sample sipdown from my last order.

So, I had a mystery tea at my neighbor’s house the other week (just a black tea in a glass jar – no label. Did find the bag it came in using my nose, but there was no English on the bag, so I was still in the dark) that was different from anything I’d ever had. Fruity, sweet, and so delicious! I have a mandarin lychee green tea that had a similar aspect, so I figured the mystery tea was a lychee tea. Just to see if I was right, I decided to get a sample of this oolong and compare (because like a good neighbor, I took some of the mystery tea back home with me).

Just from the smell, it’s obvious I was correct in calling that mystery tea a lychee tea! Yum! So sweet and tropical! It also has some nice floral notes.

Taste-wise this one is really nice. The floral and lychee aspects mesh together in a fantastic way! I’ve never actually had a lychee fruit in real life, but if it’s anything like this tea – YUM! Very refreshing…reminds me of summer.

So I actually drank this last night, but Steepster was still being a butt so I decided to just write down my notes and post them later. I picked up a notebook from work with this image on it, http://www.baxleystamps.com/litho/hasegawa/process_wb_c1953_fuji-wave_13-1.jpg, so I can start keeping notes on tea/swaps/companies/etc (mostly of blends I want to make on Adagio. Lol!). But that’s a different tangent.

I can’t remember if I got this my last order or the order before that. But I wanted to give it a shot because I love lychee (when I can find them), so a tea with lychee sounded wonderful.
1st steep – 4min/180* – I was surprised at the color of the brew. A very bright yellow. And floral smelling. Tasting it, it was greener than I was expecting, though I knew this wasn’t a roasted oolong so it would be lighter. But it wasn’t the grassy taste of, say, a green tea or even a ti kuan yin (I think I’m spelling that right). But a nice, well, green taste. Lol. I need to work on my vocabulary I think. There was also a nice floral taste, not overpowering, but light and just overall very nice. I didn’t really get any definite lychee flavor though. The leaves were still mostly curled/unopened, so I tried another steep.

2nd steep – 5 min/180* – Darker yellow brew this time. The taste isn’t really as green as it was the first steep. It’s alot more faint and mellow. The same with the floral flavor. I think I get a vague lychee flavor on the back of each sip, but I’m not sure if I’m imagining it because I want to to be there or not. Lol. By now the leaves are mostly uncurled, though I think I still could get a third steep out of it. I opted not to because I didn’t really feel like drinking this anymore. It just didn’t really do it for me I guess.

While this was a nice tea that I might reach for if I was wanting something light, I’m not sure it’s one I’d ever want to reorder. It might just be because I’ve been drinking alot of blacks and oolongs at the moment trying to learn the palate for those that the nuances of this tea are whizzing over my head. But what I could get from it, it was nice and certainly a better experience than I’ve had with any of the greener oolongs I’ve attempted to try.