Sipdown (113)!
Thanks to Sil (I’m pretty sure) for the tea! I remember asking for this one in a swap once, I’m pretty sure, though I don’t recall with who. They only had a cups worth though, so I was more than ok with not trying it. And turns out it worked out so I get to taste it anyway!
I cold brewed my sample; it’s been absolutely, breathtakingly gorgeous here lately so I’m not making hot tea for my commute to work anymore – which means I’ve had to be a little bit creative with what I’m picking out for cold brews. And since it’s a jumble of tea types, part of me was also relieved about not having to figure out what temperature to brew this one at hot.
This was a very weird tea; there’s certainly a lot going on with it. I tried it semi blindly; I hadn’t looked it up before hand but I had seen reviews on it so I knew to somewhat expect strawberry and caramel notes. Otherwise, I had no prior knowledge.
My experience was that the oolong stood out the most of all the teas mixed in here; and then the black tea – didn’t really pick up anything particularly like green tea. Perhaps the little bit of nuttyness at the front of the sip? But that note could be attributed to the other base teas as well. In addition to some nuttyness, I noticed a fair bit of toastier notes and mineral notes at the start of the sip; this is partially what made the oolong stick out a little more for me.
This transitioned into the body of the tea, which had a sort of ‘medium’ sweetness and richness to it; definitely the caramel. While this flavour was strongest in the middle of the sip, it was still present all throughout. The finish is where the strawberry kicked in for me; though I found it more of a soft, generic red berry sort of flavour and a lot less distinctly like strawberry.
Now that I’ve looked up the tea I know there are also some floral ingredients. I don’t recall pinpointing anything distinctly floral at all – but it is possible (though perhaps a bit of a stretch) that the presence of these flavours, if there at all, were just kind of smooshed in with the flavour of the oolong for me. With all that was going on with this tea I think it’d be perfectly reasonable for me to have missed them again.
I would totally drink this again; the impression I got is that this is definitely one of those teas that gets better the more you drink it. Thank you Sil!
haha you’re welcome. those cupcakes sound delicious!