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I have three untried oolongs from QuiltGuppy left, so I set about to sniffing each one and chose based on the aroma of the dried leaves. This one won because along with the vegetal and slight floral aromas there was a darker milky or almost caramel aroma. I didn’t realize that this tea was actually from New Zealand until I went to CTG’s website to look up some more information on it. I watched the video on their site for “proper preparation of a zealong tea” (traditional tea ceremony much like the one I experienced years ago in China), and though I in no way have a set up for that, I did give the leaves a brief wash as directed. One thing the video did not give was a time for steeping, so that was taking from all the tasting notes here.

The leaves mostly unfurled, but some are still not open all the way. The liquor is a very pale yellow, but aromatic. It smells vegetal, but almost cooked with a slight roastiness. There’s a light, milky sweetness in the aroma as well.

Mm, quite lovely! There’s a definite natural sweetness to this one, and the taste is light and floral with deeper, darker notes as well. It almost reminds me of a dark, floral honey flavor. I’m really enjoying this one. As it cools a bit the green vegetal flavor creeps back in, pleasantly grounding the sweet notes. The second steep becomes much more vegetal and brighter, almost lemony, with less sweetness and a lack of creamy milkiness that I didn’t even realize was there in the first steep until I tried the second and noticed it was gone. It just kind of blended into everything and smoothed everything out.

Thanks so much, QuiltGuppy, for introducing me to all these oolongs!