Guys, I might take up daily blogging again, I am missing my daily writing about tea. Now no promises because like I said when I decided to go to three days a week, blogging is time consuming…but I do have a lot of time, so we shall see. In other news, namely Ark news because it is the other thing that I am obsessed with, my base in the Gulch of Lamentation is complete, it is egg thief proof, secure from giant snakes, and currently very teal. Ok, I am still painting it so it is not totally finished, but building is done, yay! My next bit of Ark shenanigans is deciding if I should upgrade to a Fabricated Sniper Riffle (because I am always a sniper if the option is there) or if it is kinda irrelevant on a PVE server and I should just hunt dinosaurs with my Long Neck Riffle with a scope attachment. These are the thoughts that keep me up at night.
Last day of the GABA Oolong week with Tea From Vietnam, whose website is currently down and has been for a while, much to my sadness. I hope they come back because I fell in love with some of their teas and will be sad if I can’t get more. This GABA is pretty different from the others in aroma, it starts with a strong note of sweet potatoes, like freshly baked sweet potato pie but without any spices. Sweet notes of molasses and honey blend with a tiny bit of walnuts and a finish of ripe plums, it is incredibly rich and sweet, I felt like I was sinking into a sticky dessert while sniffing the dry leaves.
Into the gaiwan the leaves went for their steeping, and the aroma that wafts off the wet leaves is intense. Notes of plums and sweet potatoes mix with molasses and raw honey with an earthy spicy undertone and just a hint of wood. Unlike the other two I looked at this woody notes in this GABA are incredibly light, focusing more on plums and earthy notes. The liquid is soooo sweet, strong notes of honey and brown sugar with molasses and sweet potatoes, my goodness this smells like baked sweet potatoes but with a side of juicy baked plums and a touch of mangosteen. Holy moly the sweetness in this tea is something else!
The first steep starts out immensely sweet and smooth, it just flows in my mouth like warm honey but without the thickness or stickiness (it is so much harder to chug warm honey, trust me on this.) It starts with molasses and plums and pretty quickly moves to brown sugar and mangosteen. There is a touch of the familiar woody sourness I associate with GABA Oolong, but it is really quickly replaced with sweet potato sweetness and earthiness at the finish. It lingers for a while in the aftertaste.
The second steep’s aroma is similar to the first but with a much stronger plum presence, it is like plum candy or jam with that extra level of sweetness. The taste is not much changed from the first, the thing that really stands out is the increase in plum and mangosteen with an addition of peaches, it is immensely sweet. No sourness or woodiness in this steep, just heavy and heady fruity sweetness and a finish of sweet potatoes that lingers for what seems an eternity. As of the second steep I was so zenned out, just kinda melted into my chair.
For the third steep the aroma takes a bit of a toasty note along with plums and sweet potatoes, making the pie similarities even stronger. The one downside some might say to this tea is there is not a ton of variation between steeps, but I personally was very ok with this considering it was immensely tasty. This might be one of the sweetest teas I have slurped, but it is just short of cloying so I never got sick of it, I kept steeping this tea for many more steeps and even when the leaves had hit their limit the resulting watered down tea was very sweet.
For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2016/03/tea-from-vietnam-gaba-oolong-tea-tea.html
