Colored Species

This was a free sample that was included with the order hubby had me place for Christmas! Thank you, Garret!

We had a busy day. I was up before six to take the foster puppy outside to piddle, in the rain, barefoot. Fortunately it has been rather warm here. Then school with youngest daughter and more rain piddles. Just after lunch hubby came home and we went to Raleigh to pick up a few things and drop something off at my eldest daughter’s apartment.

Now I am so tired I can hardly wait to go to bed! As my mother used to say, “No one will have to rock me to sleep tonight!”

But I really need a late night libation, something special to drink before nodding off. I poked through my sample basket and found this, and apparently I am the first to log it!

Middle daughter just ground some wheat and made chocolate chip cookies and of course I had to grab one or three to much on while I made this tea! Thus, my tasting of the tea may not be perfectly accurate since I began with cookie.

What it does tell me is that I enjoy this tea with food. The tiny pellets expanded magnificently into bright green leaves that filled the little pot. The liquor of the first few steeps carried a sharp, root vegetable scent, but the taste was not sharp. I find it somewhat mineral, which always tastes very fresh to me, lightly floral, and green. It is not astringent or drying.

I am now on steep four and it is smoother and sweeter than ever. The taste is now lingering long, warm and pleasant. There is a taste of delicate green vegetables more so now, but it is a very delicate green taste, not grassy, sour, or harsh. This was a very nice “night night” cup, and I have enough sample left to do this a couple more times!

Thank you again, Garret!

I have been cleaning my house lately which is why I have been away from Steepster. My family has the propensity towards collecting randomness. Holiday items, curtains, tools and apparently tea sets. Squirreled away in a box of randomness was a tea set from Japan and a saki set. I am completely estimating but I think they are from the 40s or 50s because my Uncle was stationed in Japan around that time. It’s all gold and prettified. The tea set has a Foreign mark with a globe-like symbol—the saki set is a mystery because I can’t read Japanese…or anything but English. I have become completely obsessed with it. I had the brief thought of asking my aunts if they wanted it but I guess that’s impossible considering I am hoarding it like Gollum hoarded the One Ring.

Garret is officially my Tea Superhero. Like Batman only better. I have been on a serious green kick lately. Green oolongs, sheng pu’ers, green tea…all of it. But I had so little because that is usually not my schtick. Garret sent this one along with many other greenish teas in my last order. Happy dance!

This one started out very floral in a jasmine kind of way. Jasmine with a light honey sweetness. Surprisingly, I really loved it. The first steeps were dominated by floral notes but as the steep times got longer it veered more toward fruity notes…mainly peach. The honey stayed consistent with varying intensity.

I really liked this one quite a bit. It’s not my favorite green oolong. I think that is a tie between Alishan Oolong and Milk Oolong. But it’s pretty darn close. I’ll probably order some more of this and cold steep the last bit of this because I think it would be lovely iced.

Had this last night hunkered down pre-ice storm (my husband had just learned today would be a snow day, yay!).

This was a totally unexpected gift from Dexter3657, so generous! Thank you. (: It’d been on my mind to try in that ideal-for-swapping way where I was curious but not obsessed so it’s likely I never would’ve actually gotten around to ordering it myself even though I want to. Perfect!

It fit nicely with the pattern I had going earlier with the Da Yu Ling and Tsui Yu Jade oolongs in that it’s a lightly oxidized, more floral and fresh type of oolong (and unlike me in general who usually prefers darker roastier flavors, I seem to usually prefer lighter type oolongs over the more oxidized Wuyi ones). Maybe this is the wrong time of year for such notes, but I find weirdly I like things topsy turvy, at least in winter, as a respite from the coldness and darkness. A little vacation to spring in a cup.

I got to try this out in my new tasting set from Taiwan Tea Crafts (that sale was pretty great!) which was fun and really shows off the aroma and color of the finished tea. I find it strange that typically I hate floral flavored black teas, or perfume-y flowering teas, but when a tea just naturally has floral elements I tend not to mind, even love it. This is true even for jasmine notes, which I’ve always loathed when added/scented but enjoyed here. Hm. It probably helps that this is such a bright tea, which prevents floral aromas from seeming musty. Further steeps lead to a sort of sparkling fruity note, like a dry but fruity wine kind of. The smell has that mysterious, unnervingly sexy flower-musk thing going on that the spring tieguanyin from Verdant possessed. Very enjoyable.

The very first steep had all the floral aroma and character I describe and mostly expected from a light oolong, but the initial sip was a little intense, almost bitter. I’m seeing now others steeped this at a lower temperature, and given the light end of the spectrum for this oolong I think next time (Dexter3657 kindly gave me enough for multiple next times!!) I will lower the temp.

This was a sample sent to me from Dexter3657 – thank you!

Holy leaf expansion!

This is the first time that I have tried an oolong with a hint of floral in it. Took me by surprise, I was expecting the usual mineral taste from this one. The floral note is not so overpowering that it detracts from the enjoyment of this tea.

I’m only on the first steep and am looking forward to the different flavour profiles. So far I’m enjoying what I’m sipping.

Wow, I’m having a tea moment…………
I went through a phase where I was seeking oolongs. At that time I hadn’t really determined yet that I like the ones that are more oxidized. I was buying pretty much anything I could get my hands on. As I was trying them, I decided that the green ones really weren’t to my taste. Because of this process, I have MOUNTAINS of oolong in my house.
I brought this to work today, need to be drinking down my oolong stock.
OMG!!! This is nothing like what I was expecting. This changes everything that I thought I knew about green oolongs.
First steep – smelled really floral and sweet. The taste was less floral than it smelled. It tastes like a light oolong, some woody, really sweet, but not grassy at all. Hard to wrap my head around this.
Second steep – took the lid off my infuser and CLOVER – wow it was like I was transported into a field of flowering clover. This steep is sweeter (if that’s possible) and a little veggie ish, but still not grassy.
This tea stood up to a solid 5 steeps, each a little different than the others. I can’t really describe what it’s like. There are honey notes, maybe even a little honeysuckle – woody, honey, tiny bit earthy. Just amazing.
This tea will never be my go to tea on a daily basis, but it could defiantly be something I would choose on those days when you want something lighter. This is by far the best green oolong that I’ve tried – I have some of Mandala’s Milk Oolong, could it possibly be better than this?

The little bundled up leaves look neat in the bag, a contrast between bright green and dark. Smells very fresh and floral while steeping, the leaves really expand while they warm up. Taste wise this is pretty floral, leaning towards lavender for me. This is one of the better “green” or lightly oxidized oolong teas I have tried thus far; drinking it is an enjoyable experience.

This tea is amazing. The first time I enjoyed this tea, the aroma shot me straight back to my childhood, spending time at my grandparents house, surrounded by their lilac bushes.

The aroma if this tea is like being surrounded by lilacs and honeysuckle. The taste is sweet and clean and lingers on the tongue nicely. I highly recommend this tea.

What in the wild world of sports is this? I do like an assertive tea, and this is pushy. Yep, a big, pushy…bouquet of violets and daffodils and twigs. My OCD streak wants to know if this counts as a ‘classic’ green oolong? I just haven’t got my oolongs sorted enough yet to know that. Whatever. Shut up, OCD streak, I’m keeping this tea, whether I know what to call it or not.

Sipdown – for a tea that didn’t make it into my Steepster cupboard

Westren, 190F? Autumn 2018 Tea
I got a lot of melon flavors off this tea. It was also floral and sweet. Great tea for work, strong flavors, and well balanced.

Gongfu Sipdown (611)!

This was a free sample in my last Mandala Order, along with a roasted version of the tea. I had the roasted version last weekend and this was something I steeped up during the week. I actually expected, fully, to enjoy the roasted version a lot more than the greener version but I was just SO enamored by this tea – plus I actually remember what it tasted like; so I think this was the clear winner of the two.

I got around nine steeps from this – but that was pushing the envelope a little bit. I also paired it with the two Columbian mini mangoes that I got from the market. Those mangoes were the most amazing mangoes I have ever eaten; about the size of an egg, and just packed with very sweet, juicy, floral mango. I started with eating them while drinking the tea and the combo worked – but I did ultimately pause my session midway through to just finish the mangoes because they were SO GOOD that they needed to be appreciated all on their own.

Highly floral tasting oolong – most distinctly lilac. I used to have a lilac bush in my front yard, when I was a small, small kid living in Eyebrow, SK. I think I was like four or five years old. My favourite thing in the world was daintily picking the lilac petals off the bush and filling a mason jar with them, which I would then haul around with me to smell or feed to our labrador. Smelling the steeping leaves, after they’d initially opened up, REALLY put me right back to those childhood memories with the lilacs. In addition to tasting amazing, it was nostalgic as hell for me – and actually made me a little bit emotional.

Apart from that brilliant, full bodied and silky lilac note I also felt like there was a mix of orchid, gardenia, and elderflower to the infusions – but not as intensely as that lilac note. Very fresh, very “Springtime Flowers”. Mouthfeel was buttery/silky in general too; soft on the palate. There was a gentle sweetness throughout, but especially in early steeps before the florals hit their peak; sort of like a more delicate sugar cane note or a trace of the sweetness and coconut taste from coconut water. Very, very clean finish.

Mandala really knocks their greener oolongs out of the park – but this is something I probably wouldn’t have ordered for myself based on the description so I think I was just all the more impressed with how this sample steeped up. It was intoxicating, and lovely.

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/ByDAZRUAD3_/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFvgaVmGC5o

(Something very peaceful about this song, but also a little haunting?)