I have been waiting a very long time to try a milk oolong.
I blame this delay on the Steepster Select feature. Just at the point at which I’m considering buying more tea, something awesome gets featured and I find myself set back. Fortunately, this last select had me browsing around thePuriTea’s site, and I gleefully added milk oolong to my order.
I’m into savory teas. Creamy stuff is a weakness, but I don’t often add additives to my tea at all.
Was it worth the wait?
I think so. :)
Opening the bag, it smelled like the candy I enjoyed eating most when I was in Japan — Milky. Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s quite possible to get completely sick of milk candy in a very short period of time, but for that brief time, it is a glorious treat.
Similarly, there is a Brazilian candy that I can’t remember the name of, and it essentially consists of caramel (their caramel is rather different from ours, a bit grainy, a bit milky, and not nearly as sweet) pressed between two very thin wafers of some kind — I mean thin like a communion wafer or something, not like a wafer cookie. Those are also very delicious, and that is also what the aroma of the tea reminds me of — oolong, overlaid with that faint milky sweetness characteristic of both types of candy.
I’m not sure why I don’t connect those types of candy to milk. I never thought Milky tasted like milk, but I could tell you for certain that it was milk candy. Does that make sense? I’m sure it doesn’t, but it’s true.
Yeah. Cup is disappearing with a ferocious swiftness. Milk candy atop oolong floral notes (always gardenia to me, for whatever reason)…slightly caramel-y, but the almost-salty-very-creamy caramel of other countries, not the heavily-sugar-syrup caramel of ours.
This is…delectable. Oh, yes.
I have read — somewhere, I forget where — that some exporting tea companies flavor their milk oolongs (and other teas, like Lapsangs, for instance). I don’t know how one would determine whether or not that has been done to a tea, but I fervently hope that this tea experience is not manufactured. The thought of a plant producing something as sinfully good as what I’m sipping right now is just too lovely, and it would make me sad if it had been mucked-about-with.
Preparation
Comments
This sounds so yum! Reminds me of those White Rabbit milk candies with the edible rice paper wrapper.
On flavoring the oolong, some suppliers do mention milk or cream ‘infused’. thepuritea does not. Their description implies the favor is natural. It would be nice to know for certain.
This sounds so yum! Reminds me of those White Rabbit milk candies with the edible rice paper wrapper.
On flavoring the oolong, some suppliers do mention milk or cream ‘infused’. thepuritea does not. Their description implies the favor is natural. It would be nice to know for certain.
Rabid rana! They can do that? Claim a dairy infused tea is a flavoring?! A natural flavoring?! That can’t be sanitary.