The dry leaf smells like roast and apricot jam. The warmed leaf is sweet, fruity and floral with notes of honey, burnt brown sugar, apricot, powdered sugar and daffodil.
Following a long rinse, the tea is strange in the first steep, light in flavor but it leaves a very strong buttered lima bean aftertaste. The second steep better shows the Oriental Beauty character. I can taste a gently sweet honey, orange blossom, minerals (silica?), grass seed, osmanthus and a light nuttiness. This steep still displays the buttered lima bean aftertaste but in the subsequent steeps it turns into honey, orange zest and vanilla with light cream.
For being a tea 6 years old, this is a serviceable oolong. I don’t have much experience with Oriental Beauty but I found this version from Thailand, while much less oxidized than a regular OB and without the autumn leaf taste, to be more true to that style of oolong than to a GABA oolong, which is what Leafhopper thought it resembled. Maybe it’s somewhere in between!
Thanks for the share, Leafhopper :)
Flavors: Apricot, Brown Sugar, Burnt Sugar, Butter, Char, Cream, Drying, Floral, Grass Seed, Honey, Jam, Lima Beans, Mineral, Narcissus, Nutty, Orange Blossom, Orange Zest, Osmanthus, Powdered Sugar, Vanilla
