Golden Turtle

Azzrian Thanks so much for a bit of this one!

GOLDEN is right! It infuses to a Golden Color – there isn’t a better word to describe it, really. It’s beautiful!

The aroma is a little floral and a little savory, even.

The flavor is wonderful, too! It’s a neat buttery-broth texture with a slightly floral/slightly vegetal taste paired with that broth-likeness!

I could easily drink this all day!

ooooh, very nice mandala! simply complex.

very smooth, reminiscent of a tie guan in, or yellow…… i really don’t think i would have guessed it was anykind of oolong had it not been on the packaging. robust but in a light hearted kind of way.

on a completely separate note, i wanted to thank your group for your product excellence. i had lunch with my mum today. often we don’t get on, but life has been a bit tough on her lately and the place where we meet always has great food but ghastly tropical flavoured bagged green teas. i brought my bag of yellow buds with me and made her a pot at the table. she loved it! she was very surprised at the steep time, the colour, the taste. i know things are going to be difficult in her life for a while longer, so i sent her home with the tea and told her i’d get her more when she ran out.

your company really is a class act. and while my mother doesn’t know you at all, on behalf of us both i will thank you.

i find these days i bounce between paris (mariage and dammann) complexity and manadala’s understated simplicity. but that’s like calling a circle simple to someone whose only ever drawn straight lines. thank you for the introspectively quiet circle.

most sincerely, james.

Thanks to Azzrian for this sample! I am always interested in new oolong varietals, especially unroasted ones from Fujian/Anxi.

The steeped tea smells floral and buttery but also with a good helping of vegetal. The flavor is nice, very buttery. Slightly buttered vegetables, if they were also steamed with flowers to impart a floral note. The florals are especially prominant in the aftertaste. Almost sweet but not quite. I am quite enjoying this one! It is a really great example of the kind of oolong that are my favorite. At least that is one category I seem to have gotten pretty figured out.

Mmmm, good oolong. Thanks for giving me this one forever ago Dinosara! I have one cup left :)

Floral, nutty, creamy. . .my type of oolong!

oh man, when I said that to my self in my head, I thought of the recent toaster strudel commercials. Please do not read the above in the voice of the creepy little boy from those commercials! lol

Thanks for sharing this tea with me stephanie. i love it! :)

Started this morning with Mandala’s Golden Turtle. I prefer this in the afternoon more due to the tanginess. I’ve enjoyed this since I received it, and I decided to really focus, even got out my aroma cup hehe and see if I can taste/smell more than I usually do. I think my log is more one of laughing at myself, seriously. lol

I love reading the reviews of a certain tea, and then try to see if I can pick that taste out. I read an excellent review of it on the net and I couldn’t pick out some of the notes it mentioned: Vanilla, butterscotch, marshmallow. /cry lol. However, this lightly oxidized oolong, light to medium tightly rolled up green balls is a really good cup of tea. The wet leaves have a citrusy, tart aroma. The golden liquor has a crisp, smooth, and a slightly dry finish. It’s TGY-ish vegetal, tangy, citrusy, and some nutty notes. Recommended for TGY fans. I think you’d enjoy it if you like tangy and creamy smoothness. ^^

Porcelain gaiwan, ~195°F, 5g, 110ml, 9 steeps, 15s, 25s, 35s, 45s, 55s, 1m05s, 1m15s, 1m25s, 1m35s

Okay. I’m bad. Got more Mandala Milk Oolong ‘cause nothing has really beaten it so far. And since I’ve had the Tie Guan Yin and regular Jin Xuan three times already, I wanted to try something different. Thank you for the samples!

Anyway, the tasting notes already on the page accurately describe it. I followed Mandala’s Gong Fu guide- 15 second rinse, then a 30 sec steep adding 15 sec consecutively, then 30 in the last two.

Like Liquid Proust, I’ve had the roasted version of this oolong variety with mixed feelings. Now that it is green, I really enjoy the natural light florals it possesses. Lilac and maybe gardenia are the flowers I’m thinking of, especially like a Tie Guan Yin. But the taste tones down those florals with a creamy texture and buttery vegetal quality. As in, fresh butter and fresh greens and spinach-not the vegetables or cooked vegetables. It is borderline brothy, but too thin for me to really label it that way. Like a lot of other tasting notes, it does have a vanilla quality that is unambiguously vanilla albeit a light vanilla. Marshmallow is also pretty accurate to the sugary smell that emanates from the cuo. As for texture, it is more like marshmallow root than marshmallow candy. Every once in a while, caramel and buttercotch pucker out as it is first poured and as it cools down. I even got a caramel cheesecake taste for where my unsoaked leaves were sitting. Yum.

I knew that I would enjoy this one, but I didn’t realize how much I would like it. This tea is creamy and vegetal the way I like it to be. If you want a crispy, fresh example of a green oolong, I highly recommend this. You might be bored because this is a very subtle tea, but the subtlety of the tea makes it all the better. I also recommend Mandala’s Tie Guan Yin, but I also like this one because it s more toned down on the florals and a little bit creamier in my opinion.

Crisp oolong. Great for everyday drinking

A big thanks to Beorhthraefn for so generously including a sample of this with the tea I bought from the stash sale.

This was wonderful. I got 30 mins to sit, read, and drink tea last night. This was a floral, very green oolong that was also very sweet. The first infusion it was always like someone had added sugar to my cup. It had almost like a touch of caramel. I only got through 3 infusions before it was time to hit the sack, but I brought the leaves with me today to resteep at work western style.

If you have this tea I ask you to please make it to steep 6… it’s almost like some butterscotch candy was extracted and injected into the tea before it was plucked only to be detected when a tea has really been under stress of hot water multiple times.

Casually sipping on this and then came back to it for a sixth steeping which is rather long for an oolong and I, and B O O M out f no where it just impressed me with the complete new flavor that decided to come out of nowhere. It’s kind of rude for someone to hide when you play with their friend five different times, but whatever… I will forgive the green means to happiness in this case. This was much better than censored which is good to experience because I had thought that these type of oolong (oxidization and area) might not be something I enjoyed; fun to be proven wrong :)