I decided to organize my tea collection today in anticipation of my Della Terra order (which I’m gonna have to wait an extra week for since one of the teas I ordered was out of stock; no biggy though! Gives me more time to try out all the samples Lala sent me)! Pre organization, all of my teas were just sitting out in the open on top of our dishwasher. To clarify, I live in a basement suite, so the teas weren’t being exposed to direct sunlight or a lot of heat or anything – we have next to no natural light in the suite and it’s always pretty cool. However, post organization I now have all the small sample sizes and anything that was packaged in a clear bag or in a brown paper bag (I’m looking at you, McQuarries – 50g in a brown paper bag does not a happy customer make!), along with some tools like strainers or tea balls or measuring spoons, tucked away in a fairly sizeable drawer right next to this dishwasher! My tea is still within reasonable reach from the station it’s prepared at, but now there’s so much less clutter! The only things left out on the counter space/dishwasher are now my Tea Desires bags, which are large resealable bags with foil lining, and my tins of tea (along with the electric kettle)!
And trust me, in this case, out of sight is NOT going to equal out of mind ;)
And what goes best with tea organizing? Well, tea of course! I settled on this oolong tea because I was definitely in the mood for something fruity after eating a dinner of primarily savoury foods, and because I’m definitely going to want something I can resteep at least once tonight.
At the moment, this is my favourite oolong from DAVIDsTEA; the dry leaf reminds me of peaches and cream which is my favourite breakfast oatmeal. There’s also a floral quality to the dry leaf which melds with the sweet peach and apricot flavours at work. There are so many large slivers of almonds too which add a nuttiness to the overall smell and flavour (and, if like me, you can’t resist picking them out and eating them – each almond sliver has absorbed a sweet fruitiness to it and tastes like peaches and apricots too). Growing up, I always thought that the pure almond extract my mom would use in her baking kind of smell fruity – sort of like subtly sweet, nutty cherries. So, it’s probably not surprising that to me I can very faintly smell something resembling cherries in the dry leaf.
Steeped for four minutes and thirty seconds. The liquor is basically the colour of apple juice. The smell is a much more muted peach, but it still reminds me of peaches and cream oatmeal.
This tea has a lot of flavour contributors, but it works out really nicely and comes off, to me at least, quite well balanced. There’s a floral contributor at work here, but I can’t quite name what exactly I’m tasting that seems floral. The peach flavour is pretty strong, with a more subdued apricot. The real nuttiness of the almonds seems to be most present in the aftertaste as the peach flavour fades away. I have to say, overall, I can’t really pick out the flavour that the orange peel is contributing.
If I didn’t eat peaches and cream oatmeal practically every morning (well, realistically, every afternoon since I sleep on a reversed schedule – get up at 2:30ish PM go to sleep at around 3 AM) for breakfast this would be a really good early morning breakfast type tea. With that in mind, I think this is a perfectly good tea for the odd day out when I have cereal or waffles or something instead of oatmeal or for travelling with for days when I don’t have access to oatmeal.
