Oriental Beauty

Yay for having tea waiting when I get home from vacation!

This tastes very much like a darjeeling to me. Bright, clean, snappy, mild hint of fruit. I had been anticipating a bit more heft, but that’s not a bad thing. No bitterness or astringency in this cup. I will need to try it several times more to see if I can suss out the other flavors.

I received this as another free sample with my recent Butiki order. I am a bit leery about the directions (boiling, 4 minutes) but I have faith in Stacy’s judgment. I am excited to try it, though I couldn’t get much aroma from the dry leaf. I don’t know if it’s my nose or the plastic bags, but all my samples were lacking a bit in dry aroma. That’s okay though, because they have been super tasty!

Four minutes in, the liquor isn’t nearly as dark as I had feared. I will admit that I used more water than recommended, but I’m okay with that because as mentioned before, I do seem to like my tea a little different than the norm. I hate bitterness. I’ve got a warm yellow liquor with a sweet aroma, reminding me of florals and sweet fruit (maybe peach/apricot)?

First sips are remarkable. Honey sweetness, floral notes, sweet stone fruit. Even better than the aroma. There is something at the end of the sip that is going a little flat for me but I THINK that is residue from brushing my teeth. It was over an hour ago, but this toothpaste just won’t die!

As I get further in the cup, it tastes like someone put a spoon of honey in my tea when i wasn’t looking. That much sweetness is remarkable for an unadulterated tea. I get the sense of astringency lurking underneath it all, but it isn’t developing, just skulking in the shadows.

I have had one other Oriental Beauty, I think, but I don’t remember anything about it so I can’t compare how to does with others of it’s type. As a stand-alone though, this tea is remarkable! I prefer my teas to be a bit more complex and roasty, but this is definitely a nice tea. If you are an oolong drinker, check this one out. If you’re a black tea drinker like me, it would probably be more of an occasional drink. Yummy though!!

I’ve tried this once before, as a sample with one of my past orders. My memories of it were good, so I picked up another bag as part of the “I Love Leafhoppers” sampler a little while back. It’s been a bit neglected in my cupboard, so I brought it to work with me today so that it gets some attention. To say sorry, I’ve made it my first cup of the day!

It’s as good as I remembered. I followed the recommended parameters, and gave 2 tsp of leaf 5 minutes in water cooled just slightly (about 195). The resulting liquor is golden brown, and smells lightly fruity. This fruitiness translates into a juiciness in the initial sip — that’s one of the things I’ve loved most about the leafhopper teas I’ve tried so far. It’s quite spicy, in a cinnamon kind of way, and there’s a doughnutty kind of taste lurking around in the background. Which means, I guess, that the overall taste reminds me of cinnamon dusted doughnuts. The fresh kind, that you’ve just watched being cooked at a fair. Neglecting this one has definitely been my loss, but drinking it today has reminded me how delicious it actually is. I can see this being a morning staple for the next few weeks :)

SIPDOWN! This came to me as a free sample from the lovely Stacy at Butiki :) I decided to try it tonight. The dry leaves have a very faint honey scent, but it’s very light. I used boiling water and the whole little sample pack in 8 ounces of water, I didn’t actually realize it was an oolong until reading the description! The tea liquor was a light golden yellow, with a sweet scent.

The flavor was quite nice, quite light actually. I got a light honey flavor with a bit of floral maybe, I’m not sure, this is my first oriental beauty so I don’t really know what it should taste like at all! It was mostly like a mild darker tea, almost like a black tea, but not quite. Sigh, I am not doing a good job of describing it, as I honestly wasn’t specifically looking for flavors, I just enjoyed drinking it lol. Well, I still have another steeping or two out of the leaves, I might save them for tomorrow though, I had some tieguanyin as well tonight and I am about at my caffeine limit lol.

Overall, a tasty little tea, but I would need to drink it a few more times to pick out some flavors. The sweetness was quite nice, but I prefer the Mi Xian Black (yes, I haven’t written a review for it on here yet I don’t think haha, but I did realllly enjoy it :D) for a sweeter tea. But this was tasty, and I would probably order a bit to try again, as I am intrigued to find more notes in the tea! I will rate it though, as it was quite enjoyable :) Thank you for the sample Stacy!!

I got a sample of this with my last Butiki Order. It’s pretty much exactly as described. smooth and sweet with fruity dessert notes. I’m enjoying my cup as an afternoon thunderstorm passes over. I sure do wish my cocker would stop running around like crazy and barking at random. . .she completely ruins the ambiance. lol. She runs around, checks all the windows, barks a whole lot, checks the windows again, jumps at me, then waits excited at the back sliding door (as if I would ever think of letting her out, I’ve made that mistake before and what a MESS it was!) My three Cavaliers are just lying about setting such a good example.

Received this as a sample in my order! :D

I accidentally made this rather potent. My measuring cup was in the wash, so I estimated eight ounces in my pot. (The pot’s a bit of an odd shape, which makes that hard) Turns out I gave it a little less than five. Good job me.

Still, even though it’s quite a bit stronger than it was supposed to be, it’s still fairly sweet and is obviously sweeter when better balanced with the amount of water.

Enjoying how fruity this is. :) I’ll have to try a second infusion with the proper amount of water.

Sipdown! Reorganizing my tea cupboard always causes me to rediscover teas that I’ve had for awhile. This one just had one cup left, so I drank it! It’s freezing cold here, so I needed one more tea to warm me up!

This tastes a little fruity and definitely sweet and roasty. Yum. I’ve also realized it tastes just like the tea they serve at our favorite Chinese restaurant! Probably not Butiki’s but another version. ;) It’s nice to finally be able to place it!

We had our first snow of the season this morning! It was just a light dusting that quickly melted & the rain has taken over a little bit now, but still.. SNOW! I suppose I’m ready for the cold weather — more time to stay inside and drink tea.
The scent of this tea is sweet and mild. There is a slight earthy tone, but it doesn’t overwhelm the cup. There is also something savory in the background, but I can’t seem to put my finger on what it reminds me of.

Sipping… the first thing I notice are the woody, mineral notes. I definitely taste a bit of apricot — more like a dried apricot than apricot jam. There is a hint of sweet astringency at the tail end, but it’s rather nice. I almost wish that there could be more sweetness because I think it would take the cup to another level.

This is a nice tea, but a little too mild for my tastebuds.

My first Oriental Beauty (I have to admit, as an asian woman I find the name offputting, whether that makes sense or no). The leaf is as unique and lovely as you’d expect, full of different shades and shapes (I especially love the purple and red hues—reminds me of stripey hair colors cool radio lady rockers sported in the ‘90s, ha). Freshy brewed this smells quite sweet, just like warm, good-quality honey, yum. The first sip surprised me, almost in the other direction as last night’s in that I wasn’t expecting darjeeling qualities—that specific astringent fresh fruitiness and hint of wood—but they’re there—not nearly as strong as in a darjeeling but noticeable in a delicate, appealing way that melds with the floral honey element and just highlights the tasty sweetness of stone fruit like apricot. There’s wisps of that musky-floral thing orange blossom water’s got going on too, enough to make it feel special and dizzyingly sensual without going overboard into nauseating (so easy to do with orange blossom water, alas). Very nice balance and interplay without becoming intimidatingly intense or tiringly busy, a lot going on without sensory overload.

It’s interesting too to start to imagine what RachelJ was talking about a few months ago, the difference between old school brisker Formosa Oolong and these newer, more delicately nuanced oolongs that have some of the same flavors—stone fruit of course and honey—but are not what she was seeking for nostalgia’s sake. I’ll have to try an old FO sometime…

I really like this. To me and my personal growing up tea history, this fits as one of the most approachable oolongs I’ve tried, more like a cross between a bunch of other tea profiles (darjeeling, old fashioned Chinese black like you might get at a restaurant 10 or 20 years ago) with the stone fruit element known to classic oolongs. It’s very accessible—probably helps that it’s as sweet as it is.

A surprise sample in an order. :)

Another tea I wouldn’t normally go for, that’s really really tasty. It’s rich, a little roasted, sweet, a little astringent.

IDK. I’ve lost the words for describing a tea.

Even as it cools it’s really nice. Doesn’t get too bitter or astringent. I’ll probably resteep this, but first I need a nap.