Taiwan Oriental Beauty (Bai Hao) Oolong Tea

Roasty. Almost chocolately. A little woody. Highly satisfying, if a bit mundane. Exceptionally smooth. No bitterness, and no real aftertaste, this one just begs to be consumed quickly.

This is one of the best tasting oolongs I’ve had. The flavor has a depth and richness that is hard to describe, and hard to tease apart. I just know that I savored this tea, and it made me feel mellow and blissful. This is a comfort tea.

Sipdown! I finished this off while watching Lemonade, so I don’t remember a whole lot about it. I do remember enjoying it more Western-style than gong fu, which surprised me. Western-style brought out the honey and dark bread notes more robustly.

When looking at the flavor notes for this tea, I was rather confused. All those notes in one tea?
Turns out, yes, yes there are.
This is a lovely oolong, rich, layered, complex flavors that boil down to simple goodness. I may need some more than the little sample Ost was good enough to send to me. Oh yes, I see some tea shopping in my future. Ooooh yes.
Many, many, many thanks to Ost for letting me try this!

It had been a while since I’d had a bai hao, so I thought I’d pull one out today to sip on while I made scones. This sample came from boychik (sorry it’s taking me forever to try all of your lovely samples!). Bai hao is definitely my favorite oolong so far, although the medium roast dong ding and tie guan yin are up there too. Anyway! The leaves remind me a lot of Darjeeling, with their myriad of colors (browns, silvers, slight purples). They’re about medium size and twisty, and very light in weight. Dry scent is haylike with sweet honey notes.

I confess, this cooled a lot while I was distracted with my sticky banana hands. So by the time I drank it, it was pretty much room temperature. However, that doesn’t seem to have put a damper on it at all! It has the most amazing sweet and luscious honey flavor, along with a lovely nuttiness and slight roastiness. So delicious! There’s also a baby touch of spice, perhaps cinnamon? This tea is so autumnal.

Got this sample from Albertocanfly a few months ago. Haven’t actually had an Oriental Beauty yet, I don’t think. But this seemed to be well praised, so figured it was about time I had this one.
For some reason, I was expecting it to be more floral….
But it kinda turned out to taste a lot like grapes. Kinda vegetable and sweet. Really sweet actually.
This is just a weird combo of flavors. xD I don’t really know how to feel about this one-haha! Luckily Albertocanfly gave me a few tsp so I have time to figure out what I think. I don’t not like it. It’s not what I expected, but I guess I’ll just see if I like it. xD So I’ll wait to rate this.
Thanks for the sample, Albertocanfly! :D

The leaves here are unique, shades of purple, hints of orange. Since Darjeeling is from India, I think this is China’s answer to that type of tea, but of course it can not be called Darjeeling. Everything about it reminds me of a Darjeeling, so I’m not sure why this is called an oolong. I used two teaspoons of these lovely leaves…

Steep #1 // 20 min after boiling // rinse // 1 min
Juicy like a fruit, succulent comes to mind which is a word I don’t usually use, light, honey, sweet, autumn leaves, a hint of muscatel. A lighter Darjeeling type.

Steep #2 // 20 min after boiling // 2 min
Another very smooth cup – honey like! It doesn’t seem as flavorful as the first steep. Not as a tough as a typical Darjeeling but I kind of like if for that. I probably could have used more than two teaspoons. I hate to keep comparing it to Darjeeling, but I imagine most people have tried more Darjeeling than these Beauties.

Steep #3 // 20 min after boiling // 2 1/2 min
Yet another smooth cup – no bitterness. More autumn leaf lite. It’s almost more like one of those Kenya white teas like White Rhino from Butiki. Very nice, but I’ll have to try it with more leaves next time. I’d say the first cup was the most complex.

This smells pretty nice, it’s sweet and mildly fruity. I get honey and some grape in the flavour, and some light floral notes. (The leaves are really pretty too.)

Watching the FIFA World Cup gives me the perfect opportunity to sit down and cuddle up to warm cups of lovely tea. Plus, I love the commercials on the Spanish channel… they are much more humorous than American commercials. .

Drinking this alongside the Monkey Picked Oolong also by Teavivre.

This tea has beautiful tea leaves with white tips… it’s gorgeous and looks nothing like other oolongs that I have had before.
This tea has a much stronger roasted flavor than the Monkey picked oolong. It isn’t too green or grassy but it does have a slight floral taste to it. I love the natural accent of honey in the background.. it really pulls together the flavors for me. It’s really smooth and just gets better and creamier with each successive resteep.

Thank you, Teavivre!

I am having a great nostalgia moment. Ben’s family went out for sushi and brought me back some, which is awesome since I love sushi. I thought back to my first experience with sushi, I had to be three or four, visiting my grandparents. My uncle was also visiting and making sushi, I remember getting my greedy hands on the toasted nori and loving it, and my grandmother teaching me to eat with chopsticks. I have no memory of the sushi itself, but the preparation is clear in my mind all these years later.

Today’s tea is Teavivre’s Oriental Beauty (Bai Hao) Oolong Tea, (or Dong Fang Mei Ren) a very fancy Taiwanese oolong that has an interesting symbiotic relationship with leaf hoppers. High in the mountains of Xinzh, Taiwan, leaf hoppers nibble on the leaves of the tea plant causing an immune response, which gives us a very unique taste and aroma. Without this little adorable green bugs, we would not have this tea. The aroma is quite rich, a blend of yeasty sweet bread, sharp muscatel, and sweet raw honey. There are also faint notes of loam and smoke at the finish. Overall the aroma of this tea is quite sweet.

Brewing the tea, the leaves have a very deep and rich aroma. It is a blend of caramel and muscatel sweetness with an almost earthy, almost loamy finish. There is also a very faint hint of cinnamon that gives the tea a layer of warmth that blends really well with the loam and earthy notes. The aroma of the liquid is warm and sweet, with notes of caramel, molasses, and a finish of muscatel. The aroma of this tea reminds me of late summer and the promise of autumn. It warms me and is very soothing.

The first sip fulfills the promise of warmth and richness from the aroma. At first the taste is richly sweet and muscatel, as the sip slides down my mouth it changes to honey and lastly loam. The aftertaste is sweet and like honey. I found that the mouthfeel was smooth and slightly tingly, probably from the adorable little fuzzy bits on the leaves. This steep managed to have a very distinct presence while being delicate and light, now onto steep two!

The aroma of the second steep is much more muscatel sweet and has an extra intensity. After the initial muscatel aroma it fades to a gentle loam. The mouthfeel is drier than the first steep and it does not have the tingling feeling. The taste is great, a tiny bit of stewed plums, a hint of cinnamon warmth, and a nice heavy dosage of sweet muscatel and loam. Again I am reminded of summer, except this is very late summer after the harvest and you are getting ready for the creeping chill of autumn.

For the third steep the aroma of the liquid is sweetly muscatel, a bit of loam, and a sweet finish of stewed spiced plums. Like the second steep, the mouthfeel is dry, which gives it a mouth smacking brightness. Yes, I did the lip smacking yummy sound, I am very dignified. The taste is very similar to the second steep, just more of it. Stronger notes of stewed plum and muscatel, with hints of spice and a sweet aftertaste.

Time for the fourth and final steeping. The aroma is mildly sweet and loamy, it is faint in comparison to the previous steep, but still quite nice. The taste sings the same song, this tea has performed its beautiful song and now it nears the finish. The taste is a delicate blend of loam and sweet plum. It is refreshing, like the tea you would want to sip after a long day outside harvesting your garden. Bai Hao Oolong has been on my ‘must taste’ list for a very long time, now that I have experienced it I can see why Queen Victoria (The first and best) called it Oriental Beauty, it is truly a beautiful tea.

For photos and blog: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2014/06/teavivre-oriental-beauty-bai-hao-oolong.html