Thailand 'Red Tiger' Oolong Tea

Sipdown. This is delicious. I don’t know that I have much to add beyond what derk and leafhopper have noted. I’m not super-drawn to red oolongs, but woo… this is lush with plenty of mystery.

Edited to add: I realize I called this is sipdown, when my intention was to do a western brew after my gong fu. I just brewed the last serving western now, a couple days later — it is fantastic here, as well, and quite a bit different, actually! The overriding note was now caramel, with that fluffy, white-flour sweetness that pancakes have without any syrup (that often makes me question putting syrup on them at all). Fruit presented more in the second second (~6min) steep. I’m not quite ready to put this in the 90s (my definite reorders), but I think this is a lovely red oolong that I’d like to spend some more time with in the future.

Red oolongs get less attention than they deserve, so I was happy to see this sample in my last What-Cha order. (Then, of course, I let it sit for over a year. . . .) I steeped 5 g of leaf in a 120 ml pot at 195F for 25, 20, 25, 30, 30, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

The dry aroma is of apricots, berries, grapes, flowers, roast, and honey. The first steep has notes of cherry, banana bread, apricot, plum, honey, and roast. The next steep adds muscatel and jammy berries, with a bit of a drying finish. The next couple steeps have even more baked cherry, blackberry, plum, honey, butter, banana, roast, nuts, and florals. The fruit kind of melds into a general impression, but I can pick out individual flavours if I try. The next couple steeps are a little more drying, but still have that intense cherry flavour. The roast and nuts are becoming more prominent. I finally get some jasmine in steep six, along with a more pronounced grape/raisin note. The cherry persists over the next few steeps, while the tea increasingly has notes of roast, wood, bread, and minerals.

This is a lovely dessert tea with a distinct cherry flavour that I haven’t found too often elsewhere. Some of the other fruity notes are muddled, though that could be because I wasn’t using enough leaf. I’m not sure this would be an everyday tea for me, but I’m glad to have tried it.

March 2021 harvest, gone gongfu.

This is a very approachable oolong like most highly oxidized, or red, oolong. In character, it is much like a bug-bittern oolong mixed with a dark white tea.

The aromas and quickly developing, lingering aftertaste are really a treat. In the hard and shiny nuggets of the dry leaf, I pick up on white grape juice, muscatel and sweet, roasted notes. In addition to those, warming the leaf brings a strong aroma of honeyed, baked cherries — very natural. Rinsing brings the roasted notes more forward as roasted nuts, and they are supplemented by paper, plum, blackberry, cherry and some hints of resin; in general, sweet and tangy, roasted.

At first the aroma of the tea tends toward honeyed baked cherries. As steepings progress, the aroma turns into a dominant white grape-muscatel. With that transformation, the tea also becomes noticeably floral. Jasmine comes to mind and that fits my experience of some jasmine-scented teas of white, green and black types — many of them tend to have a strong grape note to my senses.

With the juicy, pleasing aroma also comes an array of fruit in the mouth. The main taste of the tea is rather woody with a light touch of honey, but as soon as I swallow, tangy fruit tones bloom and merge with the supple and fluid juicy tones. I pick up on apricot and cooked plantain mixed with cherry, white grape juice, muscatel, plums, blackberries. Soon after, a bright buttery-cream taste merges with the fruitiness in the aftertaste. It’s just the right accent, not overtaking the palate. Final steeps become woodier, more floral and drier as the butter-cream aftertaste persists.

The tea has a body like soft spring water and leaves an impression of being somewhat pectic and oily. Initial infusions have a clean and glassy mineral quality and a noticeable salivation effect. One thing I take issue with is the tea has a tendency to have a papery-tannic drying quality in the throat, making for a laborious swallow in the minutes after finishing a cup.

I admit I drink some snooty teas so when I do have a session with an affordable tea with easily accessible qualities, I get so excited at the idea of recommending it to newer gongfu tea drinkers. I don’t think you can go wrong with this Thai oolong, just be aware of the dry throat effect!

Based on the reviews, it is a polarizing tea, with some reviewers being clearly disappointed and turned off by it, while the others sing praises. I am firmly on the side of the smitten and impressed..

This tea is very aromatic (honey, cherry and fruit in general) and its taste is full of the exuberant flavors of light-colored honey, baked cherry, banana, apricot, milk and baked bread. The taste is very loud and clear, with different elements blending together seamlessly. Not much of the bite at all.

This is clearly a dessert tea. It comes out well both Western style and gongfu. I am quite impressed by what this oolong delivers for quite an affordable price.

Just call me the Grand Dame of Unfinished Projects. By that chair, a rag-tied Christmas wreath, 1/16 done (needed to start it for proof of color concept). By this chair, two crochet projects; a scarf that could travel with me in the car on a trip to Kansas, and a shawl-ish thing that is bulky and can’t be done with a clingy cat on your lap. Down the hall, a folded basket of laundry that I haven’t put up; Mount To-Be-Read in various stacks and piles…

So what am I doing? Feet up watching old Muppets Tonight episodes. I have a crush on Bobo.

And to add a little class to my unscheduled pit stop, a cup of this really nice roasty-toasty oolong, courtesy of our friend derk. It strikes me as being very un-oolongy with a very gentle honey-wheat toast profile. I’ve often joked about my husband’s hyper-tuned floral sensor; I let him sample it and he picked up some jasmine and floral notes, which are confirmed somewhat by other reviews. But to me, those are very much in the background. A little loveliness in the midst of undone housework.

This was a sample that came with my order and It took me so long to get to it.I prefer lighter oolongs which is why I put off trying this dark roasted oolong for so long.
Harvest: May 2019.

The washed tea leaves smelled malty and a lot like stewed or steam banana leaf. There was a faint smell of brown sugar as well. I brewed this gongfu style.

1st infusion ~25 sec
Creamy and smooth. Honey and stone fruit flavor

2nd infusion ~ 20 sec
floral notes came out and over took the foreground. Very smooth.

3rd infusion ~20 sec
The fruit notes started to take over this infusion starting to get sweeter

4th infusion ~20 sec
similar notes

5th infusion ~ 25 sec
more astringent and drying mouth feel. The honey like taste starting to go away

6th infusion ~ 30 sec
7th infusion ~35 sec
More of the floral notes staying
8th infusion ~ 40 sec
9th infusion ~ 1 minute
- astringent and floral
10th infusion – let it sit there for a while.

The sweetness of this tea really started to come out after the second infusion and it really improved from there.

This wasn’t a favorite. I expected honey and baked cherry but instead got an almost metallic black tea experience.

Check out my full review here: http://www.sororiteasisters.com/2019/04/21/thailand-red-tiger-oolong-tea-what-cha/

Sipping a cup of this right now. Tried it on Friday and it didn’t taste like much, but then a conversation with a friend lead me to try it with 4-5 grams per 8 ounces of water instead of my usual 2-2.5 grams that I use for blacks and whites. Well, I feel like a fool now because there’s so much more flavor in my teacup.

The liquor smells like warmed clover honey, and it looks about the same. Toasted grains, hot almonds skins, and a dry vanilla are all present in the body. A bit juicy from an unidentified fruit. The aftertaste is sweet and buttery, like a less sticky version of the creamed butter/brown sugar mixture when you’re making cookies from scratch. It mellows down to a distinct floral note after a few moments; I want to say orchid. Lovely.

I realize teas like this typically “should” be drunk gong fu, and maybe I will still get around to that (I have 50g, so plenty more to experiment), but today I just wanted to brew up a quick mug of something to go with my grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. Originally I was going to make a straight black but when I started digging through my straight tea storage, I saw this pouch, it had been opened at some point, and it’s old, so I figured, why not? (It has been brought to my attention my definition of “old” and other Steepsterers definition of “old” is not the same, so I will specify this is the Spring 2017 harvest. Yes, I consider 2017 teas “old.” Remember, I didn’t get into the tea game until fall of 2016 so my oldest teas in my collection are currently 2017 teas, and those are the ones I’d rather get out to replace with fresh.)

Anyway, I was certain I’d reviewed this before, since it was an opened package, but I did a Ctrl+F on my Steepster.txt file where I keep all my review writings and… nope! So here we go. Considering this is an older tea and brewed western, I’m sure it will not be as nuanced, so take anything I say with a grain of salt. (To be fair, anything I say about oolongs should be taken with a grain of salt anyway).

3.5g brewed in 350ml water at 205F for a 3 minute steep. The aroma is incredibly fruity, like oranges and honey, immediately making me think of marmalade jam. I’m getting a bit of an apricot note in the aroma as well, and a more subtle maltiness. The flavor is quite tasty, definitely very heavy in the fruity notes that were coming out in the aroma. Mainly I’m getting an orange taste, but it is sweeter and honeyed rather than citrusy, and I’m getting a strong stonefruit impression. There is a bit of a maltiness with hints of baked bread, cocoa, cinnamon, raisin, and toward the end of the sip, a sweet florality toward the back of the tongue that tastes of rose to me. I’m really enjoying it and impressed with how much flavor I’m getting considering the age and brewing method I chose.

SIPDOWN

I ad just a teaspoon left, maybe one and half, I don’t know. I wasn’t measuring, and I just decided to drink what I had left in grandpa style.

Turned out like a liquid freshly baked bread, with hints of roast, nuts and honey-sweetness. Luckily it wasn’t very sweet.
I am not sure about the vanilla I recalled last time, certainly I noticed it – but I had as well vanilla flavoured ice cream, so… rather it wasn’t in the tea :D

Sad to see it go, it was indeed a nice surprise to pick this one and it was very tasty.
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