1750 Tasting Notes
I don’t know if it’s the warmer weather influencing the taste, but the rose note has become more and more pronounced with this tea, and I can dig it. I am going to be sad when this one and the winter special are gone, but there is something to hoarding a small amount of this treasure of a tea. I appreciate the experience more because of it…though I would not mind having more on hand.
So, this is not too bad grandpa if I get the ratio right, and if the leaves can expand because I get the sweet pea notes with sweet vanilla, honeydew, and honeysuckle that style. It also serves as a great summer hot tea….yeah I’m crazy. I need to cold brew it.
In terms of rating, I was personally hovering around the high 80s and nineties. It’s in the nineties in terms of versatile steeping, refined floral tasting notes, creamy Jin Xuan like complexity. There are some days where I prefer this tea to a Li Shan because of it’s sunny vanilla sugarcane thing going on. But it feels like a friends with benefits tea-relationship. It’s a partner that should work well with you everyday because you are compatible with it stable sophistication and occasional eccentricity, but it does not get the engine roaring into you doing something incredibly stupid like spend a lot on it…never mind there is nothing wrong with that.
oo
So really, it could be a boo tea. This is my Boozhong, while I am having a sweet and sensual affair with Iris and Li Shan, and a long distance accord with Ali Mountain. Li Shan can be a little uppity from her high altitude, but she is underlyingly one of my favorites. Kona also gets me to do some bad things, though when you go coffee, you end up in an acidic, or toxic relationship. Yes, I’m personifying beverages again in a romantic life much more existent than the one I have. Again.
This is a good mood tea. Some teacher blues, and this made my night a little sunnier. I like this both Western and Gong Fu, and the orange blossom, green grape, mid sip grain note, honeysuckle, and violet combo is making love the crap out of this one. Also love the walnut and mega heavy dandelion notes.It pretty much has most of the qualities that I like in a greener oolong without being too green. I am tempted to get more, but I honestly want to savor this one over splerging on masses amount of it.
Eastteaguy, you own this too?
Anyway, I was fairly impressed with this batch. I saw oolongowl’s earlier review of a Red Peony on Floating Leaves, and when I saw the price tag, I opted out of it. But when I saw one on What-Cha, I knew I had to try it.
The leafs with this one are very delicate and thin, so I had to opt with a French press. However, the flavor is a little bit sneaky because it can become robust after a while, so I have to use less leaves and or shorter steeps for my preferences.
The dry leaf smell like hay and fresh linens hanging in the sun. Tasting it, it is smooth, clean, and lightly cantaloupe sweet with the cooling menthol taste that Alistair describes, and that is expected with the #18 Red Jade varietal. It is a little creamier gong fu, but pretty much the same overall. It also has some fresh cotton notes in the taste, but the liquid is a light yellow like a high mountain oolong without being nearly as grassy. This is not a delicate white tea, however, and the klondike menthol is not to be underestimated. It can get drying like a white Darjeeling, but not too try to take away from the other notes. That’s why I need this tea to cool off sometimes.
I could get seven steeps minimum from gong fu, and the menthol notes would get higher…if that makes sense. A honeysuckle floral would pop up, and the fruity notes spread out. I’m actually getting something that reminds me of cinnamon butter as a hint. I am going to have to write more about this one because I can get a little overwhelmed by the later steeps…a little bit of a buzz. Cha qi, caffiene, or menthol? Or I just need to let my cup cool down.
Well, I do recommend this one. No idea how to rate it. I personally would not drink this one often because it does overwhelm me a little bit. It does merit a rating in the 90’s although I’m personally taking my time to savor this one. It deserves some special attention. I also need to try it out grandpa or in a tumbler before I make a decision.
Yeah, this was as good as I remembered and then some. It is definitely green, but it is so smooth, sweet, and clean kinda like creamy lemongrass. Now to rate it….and 93. It might be higher. It is good Gong Fu and Western, but I am not too sure about grandpa style. We’ll see.
I thought I reviewed this….oh well.
I liked this one more than I thought I would. I tend to be persnickety about roasted oolongs, but this was well balanced. It had orchid and charcoal notes like a Qilan, but it is was still green and savory enough to remind me of its Taiwaneese origin. Like Amanda already described in detail, I got some hoppy notes of grain and buckwheat and honey. Roasted almond and monk fruit were in the after taste, because it was certainly nutty, and had a general sweetness that was a little bit hard to describe….like how monk fruit is sweet, but not really.
In terms of preferences, this was a 75, but because I plopped my bags sachets into my tumbler and drank them fairly often, I am upping the rating a little bit. Most importantly, it was an roasted oolong that was very light and easy to drink, so that makes a difference overall. I would not reach out for it, but it is more sophisticated than any average tea.
I am so glad I retried this magical jewel. Hyacinth was the most dominant floral for me, and then it was followed by a crisp and sweet green apple note in the first few finishes. I did this gong fu, and then transitioned into minute based steeps immediately after the 45 sec first steep. The later steeps were either lighter or darker depending on how I brewed it, but the lighter ones were milky creamy and lightly sweet. Of course it had the creamy notes of any green and spinachy gaoshan, but it is a very clean example of one.
I am writing about this again to say that this tea really is the magical flower power subtle Ali Shan that everyone claims it is, and I highly recommend getting some. I would buy more if I was not tea’d out myself.
Good frick easteaguy, we would probably restock the same selection of teas if we were to ever swap because you added this one first.
Well, this oolong is certainly special. Although I would easily re-order all of the teas I got in this recent order, and I am staving off drinking them down to keep them as long as possible, this one has a special place out of most of them so far. I expected this tea be something similar to a Darjeeling or an Oriental Beauty, but there is more to the tea than stonefruit notes, muscatel red grape notes, and slight woodiness.
First off, the dry leaf scent is amazing. Autumn leaves, honey, fruit flowers, fried rice, and butter was what I got. Drinking it, this tea had the nectarine-peach-apricot note that I’m used to from Nepal teas, but it also was brimming with the scent and the taste of bee pollen mid-sip, and ever lingering in the honeyed thick aftertaste. They combine so well with a slight and pleasant dryness in the mid sip to be finished off by honey sweetness. The color was amber, and so that was the color of its energy….whoah…shades of gold displayed naturally …Again, that bee pollen note makes me think I’m drinking a sunset on an orchard in the spring, or even a sunset in the fall with the trees aging and the fruit ready for harvest. This really should be a fall tea because of its autumn leaf qualities, and it is the kinda tea that you read a book near an ornate fireplace, but the bee pollen note….it’s so good.
If only this were not one of the pricier ones. Obviously, this tea ranks as a good one if it gave me synesthesiatic visions. A part of me preferred this to the Bouquet because I could drink it any time of year with its sunny bee-pollen notes, but the Himalayan Bouquet did have some of my favorite notes in a greener oolong without the grassines… Anyway, I deeply enjoyed this one, and I recommend it more for tea snobs, or for someone that you can see turning into one because it is that seductive.
This tea has already been thoroughly described. I actually got a bit of a rice note when drinking it, and in the dry leaf. I was not quite sure how to rate it. I would drink this tea pretty often if I could turn it into a daily drinker because I like it that much. I actually enjoyed that it was not as roasted tasting as some of the Taiwan Gui Fei I had. I might rate it higher in terms of taste later on, but know that I am very much satisfied with this tea.
