Topaz

This was definitely pretty different from my expectation for the blend but I liked it a lot! I think I was anticipating more of a sweet apple and caramel flavour with a hint of pear and immediately that was challenged by a fairly strong note of cinnamon. Not the red hot type of cinnamon, like in the VDay candies, but more of a warm and pastry style of cinnamon. Next to that note, I got a lot of sweet baked apple with just a hint of pear. Very, very little caramel but I guess you could maybe attribute some of the overall sweetness to caramel. Feels like a stretch, though.

On one hand I’m a little disappointed because I feel like I have a lot of cinnamon apple teas already. However, the balance of the flavours was really nice, and in particular I liked how the warming, semi-sweet baked good notes blended with the nuttier and more aromatic oolong base. That was super complimentary. It reminded me a lot of the baked apple pies you can get at Fast Food chains like McDonalds or Burger King – but so much less sweet and processed.

Got this for the oolong. This is the November tea, and uses a Tie Guan Yin for the base. Initially, I was kinda meh about the first serving since it was a cinnamon heavy oolong tea leaning partly into chai territory, but later sessions went into the opposite effect. The oolongs profile is actually very strong into the floral orchid territory of Tie Guan Yin, and the cinnamon with the flavors enhance the profile into something like a cider. This particular tea can rebrew often and is very forgiving. It kinda works gong fu with 30 sec increments to really push out the pear flavor, but the longer steeps bring out the apple and cinnamon more. I mostly stuck to tumbler steeping it or 3 minutes western.

The cinnamon can occasionally dominate the tea to much to the border of a fireball whiskey, but it provides a nice warming feeling and a cooling sensation in the aftertaste that’s really nice. The caramel really is not that noticeable and butters up the profile. The pear and apple flavoring are the best aspect of the blend enhancing the natural flavors of the oolong. It’s definitely a winter tea and I drank it more often in this cold December than November. Main criticism is price.