Thank you as always for the samples, Teavivre! I’m excited to try this one! The fragrance of the leaves are intoxicating but tough to describe – they smell like a Spring garden! A dozen types of flowers. Teavivre suggests 8 grams of leaves for 17 ounces of water at boiling with 1,2,3,4 minute steep times. (Not sure if I should have rinsed the leaves.) I used 1 1/3 or 1 1/2 teaspoons for a 10-11 ounce mug.
Steep #1 // 10 minutes after boiling // 2 min steep
The flavor is close to the fragrance – it doesn’t really have a distinctive oolong flavor that presents itself. To me, oolong is usually milk/butter, peach, floral, or grassy. This one seems to have hints of all of these things. I think I like it better when the oolong chooses to be one of those things, but this is tasty anyway. The flowers are first, tiny hint of peach, then there is a butteriness that lingers. One thing this cup isn’t is grassy. It does have a tanginess to the flavor I don’t like, but I’m sure it will get better with the second cup.
Steep #2 // 10 mins after boiling // 3 min steep
The flavor of this cup is very close to the first cup. There seems to be more butteriness but there is also more of the tanginess. I wish this tea were smoother, but it dries the mouth. There is another fruit flavor to this cup – I’m not sure what it is, but it isn’t exactly peach, maybe pineapple.
Steep #3 // just boiled // 3 min
Surprisingly, even with a hotter temp and time, the tanginess of the leaves is completely gone. That makes me think these leaves are just now getting even better than before, which means there are probably many more delicious cups possible with the same leaves. This cup is pure sweet orchids. By the third cup, this is the perfect oolong. I just wish there wasn’t as much tanginess to get there. (The rating on this one is lowered a bit because of that.) So maybe a rinse would have helped with the first cup.
