From the LiquidProust 2017 Regional Oolong Group Buy.
The dry leaves smell sweet and sightly woodsy more like an oak barrel than a forest. I’m excited to try a dark tea from South Korea and immediately brew up 5.5g in my 200ml ceramic kyusu.
The liquor infuses into a very pleasant amber color like Lipton done right. The aroma continues to be subdued, only giving me the same oak like sweet malt I got in the dry leaf. It has a fairly thin body and drys the mouth a bit. The taste is at the same time familiar and unique… It takes me back to sitting around the yellow 60’s dining room set having Tetely with milk and sugar as a young child with my grandmother… but at the same time fits my current much more snobbish palette. The tea is malt forward with a wet not overly assertive cinnamon and a balance of a tannic bite with a oak like smoothness and lasting sweetness.
At the third infusion the malty sweetness turns into a bit of fruity tartness , but turning the water temperature to 200F brought it back into that malty sweet spot. Flavorful for about seven infusions (1.5-1.7L of water) with the last two being several minute brews.
My comparisons to bagged black tea were not made in malice, quite the opposite in fact. I think a lot of tea drinkers would appreciate being catapulted back through memories while still being able to genuinely enjoy this tea. This is not a daily drinker, but rather a tea I would love to curl up with on a cold winter day and just for a little while bask in the warmth of my childhood and my grandmothers embrace, forgetting about the million things that are weighing on my adult mind.
Flavors: Brown Sugar, Cinnamon, Floral, Malt, Oak, Tannic
