Orchid Oolong

Tea #1 from the Here’s Hoping TTB
I wasn’t sure where I wanted to start with the TTB, so I just reached in and out came an oolong. I haven’t been in an oolong mood lately, but this one sounded interesting and I haven’t had tea from MIghty Leaf in years.

This smelled a lot sweeter than I was expecting as it was steeping. When I hopped on Steepster, I finally realized that this had coconut in it. That would explain what I was smelling. I’m not sure that I’ve ever had coconut in my oolong before, it gave the tea a bit of a creamy texture, but other than that I’m not sure that it really added anything. Overall, I found the flavor very watery. When I cleaned out my steeper I was surprised by how hard the tea leaves still were, which likely explains the lack of flavor.

I did attempt a resteep, but this doesn’t seem to resteep well.

This is a sample from AmyOh! Thank you, Amy!

I don’t recall if I have ever had a flavored oolong. This one has a lot of fruity aroma in the dry leaf. The silken bag is big, giving the leaves a lot of room to expand, but I knew I was going to want to drink a lot of this, so I snipped a corner of the bag and poured the leaves into my tiny teapot. Steeped 3 1/2 minutes in 195 degree water. The leaves have expanded but not to the degree some oolongs do. This is just as well if you are using the bag.

The tea is fragrant, but I don’t feel like I am drinking a mainstream flavored beverage. The character of the oolong is strong and the flavors are dancing with the tea. (Thank you, GGMathis for first putting that image in my mind.) The tea base is lightly drying and the coconut really adds a creamy, sweet character to this.

I have resteeped with the same temp water and added 30 seconds. Color is still light orange. Flavor is still good. I knew this little bag was going to resteep for me!

Thank you, Amy!

I received a sample of this from LiberTEAS and I’m really appreciative.

From the name, I thought this would be predominantly floral in character. Upon opening the packet, my first impressions was “wow, not what I expected.” The fragrance is strong of peach, almonds, apricots and dates with very subtle chocolate notes. The leaves are tightly curled.

Upon steeping, the leaves unfurled fairly well and yielded a deep gold tea. The fragrance became more coconut and date and that sense of chocolate was still there. In flavor, I picked up date, coconut, apricot and honey.

Oolongs continue to surprise me with how varied they can be in flavor and overall complexity. This is a great example.

The dry leaf of this tea smells absolutely incredible.

The flavor is yum – I love the melding of the green Oolong with its floral flavors with the sweet, creamy coconut taste. It is so good.

I am off to submit a review of this tea for the Tea Review Blog!

My favorite Thai restaurant where I live is called Orchid. Thankfully this tastes nothing like the cheap bagged oolong tea they serve there.

This is smooth and notably floral with a smooth creamy taste of coconut. Very yummy! Thanks Bethany for the sample of it. Probably gonna have to order a full size of this!

This is another sample from Amy oh. I like the smell of this one in the bag. It’s pretty light. I have to say that the more oolongs I try, the more I love them. Easily my favorite type of tea. So now my scale goes like this= oolong→green→white→black for unflavored tea.
While steeping I noticed a distinct note in this; it smells earthy to me. But it still has a note of softer cream notes as well. The liquor color was much deeper than I expected. It was a warm amber/caramel color.
It is very tasty! I love the very light floral notes. I’ve come to appreciate floral when it doesn’t hit you right in the nose. This also has a distinct creamy flavor and aspect to it. I don’t know if I would be able to identify this as specifically orchid-like. It also has some very malty aspects that I like a lot.
This is actually reminding me a lot of the Iron Goddess that I have from Rishi if they added some creamy/floral notes. Overall this is pretty tasty!

A nice sampler sachet that was included in my ML order over the holidays. This brewed up a bit darker than the oolongs I’ve enjoyed of late. Has a slightly roasted taste and a fresh floral scent and taste. Enjoyable, probably not something I would purchase more of.

Thank you LiberTEAS for sending this tea!

I loved the scent coming out of the bag but the flavor was more of a surprise. It smelled similar to the dry leaf smell once steeped but the flavor was slighly floral and a touch fruity but the bulk of it was a dry sort of earthy like flavor, not as robust but close.

Very interesting that’s for sure.

This was a very interesting oolong. It smells like a floral, vanilla green tea when dry. (Vanilla ?!?) I read that there was a coconut flavor to it as well, but I didn’t really pick up too much on that, at least not in the dry scent.

195/3 min. Now, I’m picking up on a bit more of the coconut, but now it smells like a perfumed coconut. Unfortunately, that’s also the taste that I’m finding as I drink it. It doesn’t taste like a scented tea, but more like a perfumed tea. It’s a strange combination of flavors and scents. Not terrible by any means, but I wasn’t expecting this coconut, or what comes out to be a morphed caramel flavor mixed with a floral perfume. The oolong is nice, though, and kind of grounds it as well.

Another tea from the SororiTEA Contest! Thank you!!!

I thought this sounded like a nice tea to take me out of a Sunday night homework funk, and I was right. This tea is positively lovely!

The tea smells very sweet and it tastes warm and rich and buttery and sweet. It actually reminds me of this weird thing my mom used to do when I was little where she would put butter and sugar on rice to get me to eat it. This tastes exactly like that! Which sounds completely disgusting, but it is a nice sweet/savory combo. I really enjoyed this tea a lot!