Peach Blossom Oolong

Sipdown (113)!

First things first, this is my 3000th tasting note!

I’ve been keeping track for a while trying to carefully calculate what to write and when to write it so that my 3000th note is for a tea that seems appropriate for the monumental occasion. I finally landed, about a week ago, on this tea because I thought it seemed appropriate to celebrate my involvement here on Steepster by drinking from a Steepster member who is not only a creator but a consumer as well!

I also treated myself last night to a Liquid Proust Teas order to kind of ‘mark the occasion’. With my being currently unemployed now I figure I’ll likely not get to put in any large orders for a while – so I gave myself one from a company I’ve wanted to support since Andrew announced he was starting it.

But anyway, the tea itself…

The base for this tea is a Tung Ting/Dong Ding, which is a type of oolong I find pretty enjoyable though not one I drink as regularly as other types. The infused leaf was just gorgeous; long, full olive green leaves with a nicely bruised and oxidized red rim around the edge of the leaf. I tried to show my mother, who was watching me brew the tea but she just didn’t understand the beauty of that.

With both Western Style infusions I ended up doing, I found that more than anything else that I could taste the base tea. It was very fragile/delicate overall with an initial sweet flavour with almost a ‘leather’ or gentle smoke note, but then evolved into this super fragrant and aromatic floral tea with very bright, round notes of lily or possibly lilac to a lesser extent. There was also a smooth, silky vanilla-like sweetness as well especially in the end of the sip/long lingering aftertaste.

I could also taste the peach blossom as just this extra ‘floral’ flavour with a little bit of honey and generic fruit sweetness. Sometimes I forget that, unlike orange blossoms, peach blossoms don’t exactly taste ‘peachy’. I do wish this had been peachier, though – with a name that contains both “Elixir” and “Peachy” I expected both a more vibrant, rich fruity taste as well as something distinctly peach.

That said, this was a very calm, delicious tea and I did really enjoy drinking it. I’d recommend it to fans of greener oolong as it was really enjoyable in that regard. It didn’t make it into my order last night though just because I’ve tried better things made my LP, and I wanted to restock those in addition to trying some new stuff.

Guess who got a decent amount of Dong Ding to play with?
I wanted to make a tea taste like peach rings, but then I found out there are peach blossoms so I scratched that idea for the time being and lightly flavored this nice leaf and measured out some peach blossoms to add to it :)
Don’t tell anyone, but there is hope for floral flavors and my taste buds after all.