Bleu Peacock

This was pleasantly surprising! I really enjoyed the flavor of this tea: flowery and citrusy. It tastes slightly less chemical than the other mighty leaf teas I’ve had, but it still kind of artificial.

I got this tea in a trade and was really curious. It’s a very green oolong, with a truly unique flavor. I can’t say I like it in large doses, and I couldn’t stand it cold, but it’s definitely worth trying. It brews up pale yellow and tastes… “purple”. It’s hard to describe, really. There’s a vegetal oolong taste, but mostly… it just tastes purple. The tea itself is lovely to look at, however… lots of green, blue, and yellow.

Mighty Leaf appears to have changed the recipe of its Bleu Peacock oolong blend, as my cylindrical can clearly states that the base tea is Fancy Formosa Oolong from Taiwan (redundant, I know, but they are obviously underscoring its origin), not China. That would make this the bug-bitten Bai Hao, according to Michael Harney in The Harney & Sons Guide to Tea. As someone with a severe aversion to insects, I could have continued on happily in ignorance of that fact, and I imagine that the folks at Mighty Leaf don’t go out of their way to mention it for that reason as well, knowing that many gringos would recoil at the news.

The scent of the dried tea—which appears to be more black than green on the oxidation continuum—is fantastically enticing. It’s another case (like the Republic of Tea Milk Oolong), where I can pop the top off and take a deep sniff and be immediately elevated. Seriously, it’s that appealing!

The problem with such richly scented teas is that they seldom deliver the same level of experience when it comes time to imbibe. This is a good tea though, better than I was expecting. As usual with flavoring-added teas, the second infusion was more about the base tea than the extras. But the base tea is pretty good, so I’ll be doing a third infusion in a bit.

I have been gravitating toward pure teas, but I have to admit that this is pretty nice for a flavored tea! This blend contains vanilla, caramel, and lavender, in addition to jasmine and green tea. So a lot going on. To me it smells rather like chocolate! The flavor seems quite familiar, but I would not identify as vanilla, caramel, lavender, jasmine, or green tea! I’m not really sure what it tastes like.

Aha! I just read on the can that Bleu Peacock is supposed to be reminiscent of chocolate. Mission accomplished!

This tea is ok. It has nice a nice flavor but I wouldn’t say it is among my favorite teas. It has a very deep aroma and liquor, a little blueberry-ish. A good change, not sure about an everyday favorite.