Taiwan Sourcing

(Spring 2022)

Sipdown 23 – 2024

A few years ago I got really sick of any type of roasted oolong, so I stopped buying them entirely and haven’t had one in a while. This is a good reminder of why I don’t like them. The roast flavor covers up the tea itself and I just can’t taste anything except the roast.
The roast on this is light but it’s still so dominant that I can’t taste anything else.

(Summer 2018) Licorice-like, pleasantly fruity Taiwan black. Verges on oriental beauty/ roast oolong rather than black.

(Winter 2022) Sweet aroma of sticky rice. Very smooth and round. Sweet/savory palate like congee. Lightly roasted style. Nose is subtle but very pretty.

(Winter 2017) Just wow. Incredible texture. Floral and fresh spring vegetable essence. Needs nothing more.

(Summer 2019)

(2022 Summer “Melody of Lotus”) Real perception of sweetness. Presents with blackberry and raspberry fruit. Lots of floral and fruit qualities but very well integrated.

(2022 Winter “Agate Lake”) Succulent, very floral. Muscat, confectionary, juicy fruit. Greenish-brown in the cup.

Mmmm, lovely and delicious GABA green tea, ball rolled.

This tea is unique for sure, and it really is a treat! It’s sweet and textured in the mouth right out of the gate. 10 sec wash and then a 30s steep.

Several more shorter infusions of 15-20s yielded great green/jade tea. Soft, sweet, textured, and slowly taking on some greener/gassier/floral notes. I could drink this all day.

7-8 really great steeps in a gai wan. Definitely worth having some around!

Sold out at YS.us but still on TS.

Sipdown 65

This wasn’t great. I’m very much over charcoal roasted oolongs, and didn’t realize this was one. It was lacking depth and tasted very much like charcoal.

I drank this in 2018 so it is like a dream to me. Stunning tea. One of the best oolongs I’ve ever had. (reviewed 2022)

Sadly, none of the subsequent cups after the first tasted quite as wonderful. Much more like dried hay with a suggestion of jasmine. One more cup to go.

Sorted through some of my Taiwan Sourcing teas and grabbed a few to start working on sipping down. I have quite a few jasmine teas right now, so decided to dive into this one.

The absolute best jasmine flavor- sweet and floral without being perfumey or artificial. This tastes fresh and wonderful. Love the oolong base over the standard green base, as it allows the beautiful jasmine flavor to shine a bit more. Absolutely no bitterness- just smooth, clean jasmine.

The jasmine flavor also holds up against multiple gongfu steepings (up to 4 so far).

Sipdown 5-2022

Found a sample of this in one of my tea drawers and decided to have a short gongfu session.

Smells incredibly salty and savory- like a bean stew. Tastes equally as savory as it smells, with an added roasty quality that is not as apparent in the aroma.

Because of the savory quality, I decided to use some of the leftover leaves in a recipe that I used to make often, but haven’t made in awhile. I crisped the spent leaves in some sesame oil and added them to a quick kimchi fried rice. So good.

This tea is definitely more floral than I expected. It’s a lighter tea that has wonderful flower and nectar notes. The only downside is this tea doesn’t have much of an after taste, which definitely makes this feel less smooth

This tea has been my favorite thus far from Taiwan Sourcing. For a charcoal roasted Oolong it tastes almost wrong. Instead of a roasted firm flavor you instead get heavy floral notes that fade to an almost amber. It’s a lovely tea. I was thrown off initially due to the stems in the bag, however after brewing and watching the leaves this is a beautiful full medium sized leaf tea that you could tell was loved from start to finish in my cup.

This is a perfectly tasty but not terribly exciting oolong. The flavor is that of pleasant, nondescript fresh fruit, with an underlying cinnamon sweetness characteristic of Taiwanese teas. The body is medium, falling short of a good Chinese TGY, and the astringency is on the heavier side for this style. I try not to let cost factor into my ratings, but this is a very pricey cha (I paid $33/25g), and the disconnect between that and the experience in the cup is disappointing. I would recommend this if you’re an oolong fan and can get it for a significant discount, but otherwise, there are plenty of more worthwhile purchases one could make from Taiwan Sourcing.

Is an Oriental Beuty Oolong by any other name just as sweet?

Yes, yes it is. This tea is beautifully honey tasting and floral. I have not had a Bug Bitten tea in a decent amount of time and this tea was a homerun. The floral notes I got during my first brew slowly faded to one of even more honey. Would recommend for anyone a fan of Oriental Beauty as it’s just solid.

This reminds me a lot of Mountain Streams Heavy Charcoal Roast.

This tea is good, however the problem I’m experiencing with it is it is not very full bodied. It’s quite mild in comparison to other roasted oolongs which kind of confuses me. The other flavor I noticed that is definitely different is tobacco, albeit that flavor is light. I brewed this tea western style for (on my current) fourth infusion. It’s possible I needed more leaves, but even then I don’t think so. The lack of depth on this definitely throws it from Recommend to not recommend.

The flavor on this tea is decent, maybe a slight nuttiness but not much. Decent astringency but almost no bitterness