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“What a surprising tea. It was flavorful and sweet. Yummy, can’t wait to have more.” Read full tasting note
“I think this tea must have been destiny. I won the first Sanctuary T trivia contest and decided that I had mostly enough tea leaves on hand, so I bought tea ware primarily. (I brewed this with the...” Read full tasting note
“This is another sample from the pure T sampler, and the first of the Sanctuary T samples I haven’t sipped down in a single serving. It’s about 9g of tea, and that was too much for my gaiwan. So I...” Read full tasting note
High grade, competition “Monkey Picked” oolong. Beautifull taste, aroma and appearance. A must have for any connoisseur.
Sanctuary T Shop is the online expression of New York City’s unique tea-restaurant based in Soho. It is dedicated to celebrating tea’s many forms, attributes and tastes. Owner Dawn Cameron and her team of tea-loving staffers are always experimenting for the perfect tea blends, tasting for the best pure leaf, expanding their tea knowledge, and innovating with new ways to use tea in food, cocktails and just about anything else!
I think this tea must have been destiny. I won the first Sanctuary T trivia contest and decided that I had mostly enough tea leaves on hand, so I bought tea ware primarily. (I brewed this with the help of my oh-so-cute wooden sandtimer!) But this was the one tea I made the exception for, and I’m so glad I did. The flavor is a little hard to describe — if I could be completely fanciful I’d describe it as “genmaicha’s big sister”. It has a similar warm and toasty feel with a slight sharpness similar to green tea. I’m not a big green tea fan, and it’s not too strong here. The flavor reminds me of genmaicha, but a bit richer and deeper, and not quite as rice-y. For me, this is perfect. I think in addition to the food suggestions above (fried + basil/garlic) that this one would also go well with some slightly spicy foods, and probably smoky as well. I think it’ll be a great drink when I try out my Smoky Black T-Dust.
This is another sample from the pure T sampler, and the first of the Sanctuary T samples I haven’t sipped down in a single serving. It’s about 9g of tea, and that was too much for my gaiwan. So I get more than one shot at this one.
I expected this to be pretty much what I’ve experienced in other tieguanyins from the look of the dry leaves and their green, floral aroma.
But I started with hotter water, and the first steep after rinsing (15 sec) was more like a darker oolong. More of a roasted flavor than a floral/dairy one. The steeped tea does have a strong floral/dairy note, but it’s got a roastiness as well.
So I decided to go cooler for the next steep and see what that did. The water temperature didn’t seem to make much difference in the flavor. So I’m concluding that this is a medium or dark roast tieguanyin, rather than a green.
There’s an interesting toffee-like note to this, particularly in the finish, and once I stopped looking for the green oolong flavor, I could focus on the nuttiness of this one.
I took it through several more steeps, but I’m reserving the rating for now as I’m not sure how to classify this. I’ll think about it more and give it another try before rating.
I spent the morning going through papers that had piled up and have paper cuts on three out of five fingers on my right hand, so my notes are likely to be a bit shorter than usual for the next day or so. Ugh.
Flavors: Almond, Floral, Nutty, Toffee
