Lychee Oolong

This one didn’t want to come up in the search bar – so I had to did through my cupboard. I mean, if I had a reasonable number of tea that wouldn’t really be a big deal…

I’m trying to do some resteeps this evening since I’ve had several teas today/yesterday that I know are good resteeped. I typically don’t resteep at all (only if I’m too lazy to clean things out) since I don’t generally want several cups of the same tea – I want variety. But there are some teas I’ll make a special effort for – and hell yes this is one of them.

The second cup was every bit as good as the first, despite some over steeping. A touch more floral, but still very genuine and juicy.

This is the perfect lychee tea! Lychee + light and floral oolong = perfect!

Soooo…last night I bought myself a BIG early birthday present….and it isn’t even tea related! http://www.scrangie.com/2012/10/official-announcement-for-opis-holiday.html All of them. Every single one. I had forgotten how much I love James Bond movies. I think I got through around 1/3 of the older ones once but sadly Netflix Instant is horribly lacking. Out of the new ones I’ve only seen Casino Royale, aka how I found my girl crush. I CAN’T WAIT FOR THEM TO GET HERE.

I actually completely forgot I made this tea and started writing the progress report for my group. And it sucks. So I feel bad but whatever but the entire thing has just been an entire whatever. Thankfully this tea doesn’t really care if you let it cool off because it is still tasty.

This brews up really light but the flavor is so good. It’s a very strong lychee flavor, and I can’t taste any oolong because I feel its floral notes got bumped right into the lychee! I’m going to give it another steep while I try to clean up my place a bit…hopefully find a place to put all these teas!

Roswell Strange sent this my way and like so many other Butiki teas, the lychee flavor is spot on. The flavor is light, delicate, and slightly floral. A very tasty cup. Thank you Roswell Strange!!

Made this one but used a 2 minutes steeping time instead of the recommended 4 minutes. I found it much more to my preference at the 2 minutes. There is still a strong lychee perfume smell but the taste is much less perfumey. It tastes more like sweet lychee. It blends well with the green oolong. The oolong tastes sweetly vegetal, slightly flowery. Definitely liking this one more and more every time I try it.

I’ve been putting off sampling this one for awhile, I guess because some part of me didn’t really think it would taste like lychee. I was wrong. I was SO wrong. Not only is the taste & aroma true, it matches the floral oolong so beautifully that I will have to add this one to my collection at some point. For now, it’s a lovely spring like cup, bringing to mind the narcissus & daffodils that will bloom in my yard in a couple of months. Time to resteep & sit in my sunroom, because in spite of the snowy outside, the sun is shining & it’s really nice back there. A sunny tea, a sunny day, surrounded by my little fruit trees & other plants.
Yes, there is a Heaven…

After a few days of not having any loose leaf teas and only drinking Keurig chai lattes, I am happy to have loose tea again.

I have never had lychee before but this is delicious. The first couple of sips of this tea were interesting. Tasting something for the first time is always exciting. As I continued to sip, I enjoyed it more and more. There are lots of fruity notes (which I assume to be the lychee). The floral notes are in the background and are subtle, but I find that they add depth to the tea.
Resteeped for 4.5 minutes was just as delicious, and I found that the floral notes came out a little more.

The dry tea carries elegant, perfumed notes of lychee and oolong. I overleafed slightly, and I swear the little Butiki anole on the bag looked at me disapprovingly.

Steeped, this smells mostly of really gorgeous oolong. Flavour wise, the balance is absolutely perfect – the lychee is tartripe and ripesweet and sweettart all at once, and the oolong intermingles with it beautifully. The watery mouthfeel that has been my main objection in my Butiki trials so far (I need to experiment some more with leaf amounts) is not present, and the overall impression is a very smooth, cohesive sip with a fresh aftertaste that perfectly mirrors the elegant perfumed fruit notes present in the bag.

So far, my favourite from Butiki, together with the Maple Pecan Oolong.

[From my Butiki order to Santa Clara, October 2013.]

i’m having a dramatic moment.

in my mind’s eye i am standing at the lip of a great chasm… perhaps the grand canyon, perhaps a crevasse that has opened while climbing k2. in my left hand is my tea cup; oversized, plastic (because i’m forever dropping things)… i sip and become a human incarnation of edvard munch’s ‘the scream’ http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/asset-viewer/the-scream/eQFdRTFKDtVQ1A?projectId=art-project&source=kp&hl=en . ‘noooooooooooooooooooo!’ i shriek (though much more tastefully than macaulay caulkin in home alone).

this lychee and i were destined to meet. we have been reaching across time and space and infinite galaxies in order to be together… i have been looking for so long. i have found teas named lychee, but they were all lies. this THIS is a lychee tea. i am certain that stacy lim has sent mass quantities of this blend to dr. who to stock the tardis. to me that is the degree of infamy this blend has achieved!

why am i screaming ‘no’, bouncing the word over and over off the walls of an impressive hole in the earth’s crust? because it was only a sample and i’m out now. and i made a stupid promise to myself (that i may deliberately have articulated out loud to my wife) that i would purchase no more tea until the middle of july at least. and then even after i order i have to wait for shipping time.

people say that life’s not fair. i will now take the opportunity to be far more specific: life without tea is not fair.

relevant tea review information outside of drama: tidy rolled balls of oolong that don’t smell dry even when they have not yet been immersed in water. they smell rich and light and floral. this tea doesn’t taste like lychee, it is lychee. i have a series of unusual adjectives i apply to exceptional teas. the most common one is ‘honest’— meaning it is exactly what it says it is. this tea leaves ‘honest’ in the dust and grabs another atypical descriptor: ‘accurate’. this tea is a cup of perfect lychees harvested at the ideal time. not a one was dropped, no bitter peel sullied the fruit.

there is no lychee aside from this.
and i am out.
‘noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’.

p.s. thank you stacy for the sample.

Thanks again Stacy for this sample tea!

Last night I was so bad! I had such a sugar craving that I put cherry jam in my tea! It was verry good!
Naughty me!
This little sample packet from Butiki caught my eye this evening and I had a hunch that it would be luxurious and exotic enough to satisfy my sweet tooth!

After a 4 minute steep, I poured the pale yellow liquor into a tasting bowl and inhaled.
Ummmm, fruit like warm pears…..and smelled like paperwhites.
The flavor was sparkling and pearlike also, with plenty of floral sweetness and cream to make the taste fat in my mouth. The fat flavor rolled around over and over. It just would not quit until the tannin kicked in like a door stop!
I sweetened my cup a bit. I did like the dripping nectar, gooey flavor of Lychee fruit. It made me think of Kauai.
Most people go to Hawaii and lounge on the beach, drink, go to clubs.
I go to the beach, snorkle then find a local Farmers Market. I buy exotic fruit, veggies and seafood…go back to the condo and cook! Kauai was Lychee, Pineapple and Rambutan! Nice and juicy fruit! Yummy fruit ready to eat right away. No cold storage fruit from the store. Heavy with natural sugar fruit!

This Lychee Oolong takes you on a vacation! It’s so ripe with flavor and so juicy!

http://youtu.be/mlCiDEXuxxA You can’t get much more retro than Don Ho and Tiny Bubbles 1967