Red Blossom Tea Company

Absolutely wonderful.

That is what I have to say about this tea.

The leaves are beautiful. Long and twisted, downy in spots. They brew a very pale tea with a heavier scent than its taste. It smells almost like sweetgrass. The flavor develops beautifully as the tea cools. It starts out like a very light pi lo chun. I don’t really know how to describe that flavor but its definitely akin to that class of teas. It tastes like a light chinese green, I guess. I don’t pick up on many other notes until it starts to cool and then it comes alive. This tea doesn’t relax me like a pi lo chun does. Instead, it refreshes. The flavor is delicate but lively. It has a faint grassy note but not like japanese teas. It’s more like sweetgrass. This tea is just so revitalizing. I couldn’t stop smiling while I drank it.

I love this tea, it is one of my very favorites.
Smooth nutty flavor, wonderful mouth feel.
Can be infused many times.
I start out with medium hot water and steep for 1 minute.

Another one of my recently acquired teas from Red Blossom and I have mixed feelings about this.

Following Red Blossom’s instructions to brew this for a minute yielded a cup of something that didn’t taste much different than hot water. There was a whisper of flavor but… that was about it. The next steep was for two minutes and this cup was a little more flavorful. The tea is delicate and sweet and tastes kind of like a weak dragonwell or pi lo chun. I’m not sure what bamboo tastes like but I don’t think I’m getting that flavor from this tea despite Red Blossom’s claims.

It’s a nice tea but nothing special. Maybe it’s just not my taste or maybe my palette isn’t sensitive enough to pick up the subtleties of this particular chinese green. I like my teas flavorful and complex. This is simple and subtle. It’s a tea I could gulp down not one I can savor. I much prefer dragonwell and pi lo chun over this.

Ratings bump! I drank this last night while doing homework and I was very impressed by the floral notes in this tea. Fruity and flowery with the occasional and very welcome milkiness.

Good for at least five steeps!

Joy of joys! My order from Red Blossom Tea Co. arrived today. My first shipment of new tea since joining Steepster… almost makes me a little misty-eyed.

New teas: Silk Oolong Formosa, Organic White Monkey, Pi Lo Chun, Ming Qian Lu Jian, Jing Xuan, Silver Needle. Plus I got a very pretty little gaiwan and samples of Phoenix Eye Jasmine and Jade Kuan Yin. Yay!

I was very excited to try this tea. Steepster was how I discovered silk/milk oolongs and the idea was wonderfully new and exciting to me. I think I fell in love with milk oolongs before I even tried one. So it’s fair to say that I had very high expectations for this Silk Oolong Formosa.

The dry leaf smells like caramel or maybe those White Rabbit chinese milk candies (love those!). It smells sweet and creamy – like no tea I’ve smelled before.

The first steep: 2 teaspoons, 6oz water at 195, 2 minutes. The rinsed leaves smell like peach ice cream. That was the first thought that came to mind. Fresh fruit and cream. Such a wonderful aroma. I can’t wait to taste this. The liquor from this first steeping had a light cream flavor but that was kind of… it. I steeped it for another minute and it developed a somewhat thicker mouth feel. The tastes I got were all over the map. At times it had no creaminess, at times I got a very lovely milk flavor at the back of my mouth. For the most part it tasted like a fine tung ting oolong with nice fruity notes. Not bad but also not what I built this tea up into. I can’t really blame the tea for that. The second steep (195, 4 minutes) tasted like a nice oolong. Sometimes like a nice oolong with a little milk added. This tea, on both steeps, leaves a nice, sweet, fruity taste behind. Occasionally there’s a caramel taste.

It’s a very nice oolong. It’s exciting to drink since you never really know what taste you’ll get. I’m definitely a fan. The description leads me to believe that this is an oolong scented to taste like a jing xuan which, based on my research, has the milk flavor naturally. Although the information about milk oolongs on the web is sparse and varied… what I’ve gathered is that jing xuan teas are the “real deal” and then there are milk scented teas. So I’m excited to try the jing xuan.

ETA: Also! Do you rinse the leaves between steeps? I didn’t do that but I’m wondering what the general consensus is…

Shortbread.

That’s what I tasted on the first two steeps. Delicious, warm, buttery, with fruity notes and that distinct cookie flavor, shortbread.

I should mention that I’m now on steep five of this.

I know that I’m really digging an oolong if I get this far with it. Even though I know that oolongs are generally meant to unfold over steeps, if it’s really not gelling with me after steep two, I have a lot of trouble forging ahead [and often don’t]. Clearly, that’s not a problem with this one.

Auggy [thanks Auggy for this, by the way] and LENA F. mentioned tropical, candied, Juicy Fruit-ish flavors from this, and I didn’t really get that strongly until at or around steep three. The buttery component had become significantly weaker during the second steep, though I could still taste the shortbread, but by steep three it became notably more tropical in character. It shed its tartan and bagpipe and threw on a hat made of fruit and a coconut bikini.

Here in steep five, it’s light and fruity. I’m probably going to stop at this cup because it’s become significantly weaker for me. Similar to when you drop some fruit into water and let it sit for a while. It’s still enjoyable at this point, but in another cup I suspect the flavor will have dissipated beyond the point of notability.

This isn’t as complex as other oolongs I’ve had, and it is very, very different from other formosa oolongs that I’ve tried, but I imagine that I’ll want to have it around for, at the very least, those first three steeps.

I like this oolong and I’m usually not a fan of hand rolled leaves. This tea is super sweet smelling. I caught myself thinking about cotton candy…but by the time I identified the smell, it faded out. My nose spent a lot of time in my cup. There are several fruity notes in this tea. It could almost be a flavored oolong. Tasty cup!

I’ve served this tea to a lot of people by now and everybody asks for it again. The flavor changes quite a bit with temperature and time so you need to find your own sweet spot. I like it a bit stronger so I use a longer time then Red Blossom recommends.

Not entirely sure if this is the exact Dragonwell I’m drinking. I do know it is from Red Blossom.

I went to @VegaatLangton and asked for this tea without the water. The Batista looked at me funny then laughed. “You just want the tea bag? Do you want a cup?” She laughed again. The reason I asked for just the tea is because they sell this very tasty loose leaf tea from Red Blossom, but they only have one hot water source and it comes from the coffee machine. The hot water it produces is scorching hot, even above boiling temp. It would burn the delicate green tea and destroy it’s flavors. I gave her 2 bucks and took the handmade tea bag and went back to work.

I emptied the leaves from the bag into my infuser. It’s the perfect amount. I thought about keeping it in the tea bag, but there wasn’t much room for the leaves to take flight in. I’m on my second steep this morning and the flavors are much more than I would ever get if I had just ordered a cup of tea from this hole in the wall coffee shop.

The brews are lightly colored, but strongly grassy. Definitely has remembrance to a warm humid summer day, looking out on corn fields, while watching grasshoppers and gnats take over the golden sky as the sun sets in middle America.

This is by far my favourite roasted Oolong tea, the first steep is excelent. somewhat strong, but with each steep you can really taste the Charcoal. This is a tea i will probably continue to drink for a very long time

Really good, unique compared to most cooked pu erh. very smooth

I think this is what I’m drinking… Not sure. I was falling asleep at my desk at work, so I decided to hit up the new coffee shop that opened up in a garage around the corner. I had my mind set on a soy latte, assuming they wouldn’t have any tea that met my standard. Well, behold they have loose leaf tea’s from Red Blossom in Chinatown! Far superior tea any coffee house usually carries. So I grabbed the Oolong, but I forgot to catch what kind of Oolong it was. From the look and taste of it I THINK this was it. It’s super tasty! And now I am more awake then I have been all day. I am so glad I didn’t get a coffee. Long live tea!

I like.. although the Dragonwell is slightly smoother.

I do like the silver needle better though.

Got this as a sample from Red Blossom. I quite enjoy it.

First cup from Red Blossom Tea, Dragonwell Reserve is nice.. very nice.

I got a free sample of this tea with my last purchase from their website, which is clever and even more so when it’s pretty good! The tea tastes great!

I ordered this at the same time I ordered the Charcoal Roasted Tea and I love it. I will be ordering this one again and again. You should give it a try!

Kinda windy and cool out this morning and that put me in the mood for this great tasting tea. Wow… the season is changing! Have some warmth!

This tea was recommended and he was absolutely right, it’s very good!