Organic Tie Guan Yin “Iron Goddess” Oolong Tea

Tea type
Oolong Tea
Ingredients
Oolong Tea Leaves
Flavors
Floral, Green, Honey, Vegetal, Beany, Bitter, Kale, Spinach, Sweet, Sugar
Sold in
Bulk, Loose Leaf
Caffeine
Low
Certification
Not available
Edit tea info Last updated by TeaVivre
Average preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 2 min, 15 sec 6 g 7 oz / 197 ml

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44 Tasting Notes View all

  • “This is my second Tie Guan Yin, the first was from my local farmer’s market. I’ve been wanting to get into oolong, and I think I’ve found the first that I truly like. This oolong is fresh and...” Read full tasting note
    96
  • “Oh, this is so so so GOOD!! There you have it… my first reaction. Now lets examine this more calmly…. So FRIGGING GOOD! No but really, this is some great tea. I received it today, my first ever...” Read full tasting note
    92
  • “a quick note on the fly here. i stuffed this entire immense sample into my steeping basket. it was excellent!!! lychee notes, bamboo notes, very smooth. lovely clear steep, tiny bit of sugar added....” Read full tasting note
    88
  • “This is my first experience with any Tie Guan Yin. So what happens now? Do I get inducted into the Brother and Sisterhood of Tea? Am I knighted, given the Order of the Dragon? Any of that?...” Read full tasting note

From Teavivre

Origin: Zhangzhou, Fujian, China

Ingredients and Appearance: jade colored leaves (hand-made into small, rolled up)

Taste: Delightfully fresh floral taste and aroma

Brew: 3-4 teaspoons for 8oz of water. Brew at 212 ºF (100 ºC) for 1 to 3 minutes (exact time depends on your taste – a longer time will give the tea a stronger taste and color)

Health Benefits: Being lightly fermented, contained high amino acids, vitamins, polyphenols and antioxidants. These combine into a tea that reduces cholesterol and helps reduce hardening of the arteries, and so can help reduce risks of heart attacks. The antioxidants it contains can also help guard against some forms of cancer, and also help fight the affects of aging and bacterial infections.

Certifications: The particular Organic Tie Guan Yin “Iron Goddess” Oolong Tea that TeaVivre is selling, is guaranteed to be organically grown and produced, independently verified to meet USDA, EU organic certifications.

About Teavivre View company

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44 Tasting Notes

90
353 tasting notes

This is so delicious. It is mellow, and subtle, and full, and everything a good oolong should be. YUM.

Preparation
3 min, 0 sec

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92
93 tasting notes

There is this time in spring when jasmine bushes and bird cherry blooms and the scent is so thick you can drink it. The first thought when sipping this tea was that now I truly can. Completely different from Verdant’s TGY with its buttery/floral backgound this one is like a cup of flower essence.

Preparation
Boiling 0 min, 30 sec

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108 tasting notes

A great sample I received from Teavivre. I set up a proper tasting with degustation sets for each of the teas. Well, I didn’t do the traditional 6 minutes, but I did my best for the type of tea. Here’s my notes.

Dry leaf: rolled, but not really into balls. Irregular and with various stems. Perhaps this points to hand-rolling?
Brewing method: 3g, tasting set, 90 for 1 minute
Aroma: Very green aroma with a light touch of sweetness.
Infusion: Yellow-gold liquor.
Taste: Very light. Probably could be infused longer to good effect. Taste of spring flowers and grilled zucchini.

I infused this another time with a longer infusion to try and capture more flavor. It was much more bold, but still with a light body. Definitely good, and definitely a spring Oolong. I tend to lean toward winter harvests, myself, so perhaps this is just too young for me. I may let some rest in the packaging for a time to see if it improves (a trick taught to me by some tea friends in Taiwan).

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 1 min, 0 sec

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90
1403 tasting notes

A delightful tea all round beginning with the appearance of the tightly wound pellet rocks of leaf. The pellets eventually unfurl into fat large leaves happily dancing in my clear glass steeper.

The first few steeps are honey sweet and floral and ever so slightly sour. Then, the flavours become more and more vegetal, but never completely losing their sweetness.

The leaves were still going strong on the sixth steep. They had more to give, but I was out of hot water and out of time.

Thank you, Angel, for the sample. I very much enjoyed this session.

Happy Chinese New Year to you and yours!

And it’s a sipdown!

Sipdown 68

(8 of 2019)

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85
761 tasting notes

I was a bit confused with this tea. I would normally have used about 1.5 tsp for my 12 oz mug, cooler water and a 3-ish minute steep time. Amongst the notes here, I read some that mentioned using the whole sample packet with boiling water for a minute saying that was the directions for it. When I went to the site, it said about 3.5g (half the packet) for 12 oz (I forget the steep time listed). Anyway, my whole infuser basket quickly became full with the dark green leaves. I feel like mine opened up pretty quickly…at least on top where I could see them.

While I have nothing against this preparation, I’m not sure if it actually gave me any different flavour profiles. I did get about 4 steeps…I could have gotten more, but I wanted to switch to something else. The third steep was the least favourite, but mainly because I left it steeping too long. I think that with the other packet. I will stick with my normal steeping, which looks closer to the site anyway.

This was still a very enjoyable tea, and it was the right tea to have on a day that was trying so hard to be spring, but was feeling more like fall. Or early winter. Many thanks to Angel at Teavivre for including me on this recent batch of samples. I am excited to try the others.

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73 tasting notes

Drinking up a sample of this from way back when. Probably should have drank this a while ago but figured I’d clean a bit of this off today!

Very pretty leaves tightly rolled up. The dry leaf has this sharp, vegetal (?) sort of smell to it that I’m not totally fond of, but I’d chalk that up to a personal preference. Wet leaf also shows a strong, floral aroma. I find this to be a little sharper than the Taiwanese oolongs I’ve tried (such as Jin Xuan or Baozhong) which I believe is mostly par for the course.

I can’t comment too much on the flavor as it isn’t really my realm of experience, but unfortunately I wasn’t a huge fan of this one. I think this has to do with my own personal preference, however, as I prefer fruitier and smoother teas :)

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79
526 tasting notes

I drank this during an oolong binge.

The leaves are tightly rolled with smooth dark grass notes, kale, spinach, and some floral (chrysanthemum?) . I warmed my teapot and placed what I had inside. The warmed leaf gives off some odd roasted tones along with stir fried veggies. I washed the leaves twice and began my steeping. The brew brings some strong bean notes of the palette along with a slight astringent grass note. The brew is bit drying but it has some agave sweetness that lingers in the back of the throat. A minor floral note peaks through (pompoms?), and the brew continues with wet grass, dry, and agave. This was a okay daily drinker for me.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BRoC-GZgZwt/?taken-by=haveteawilltravel&hl=en

Flavors: Beany, Bitter, Floral, Kale, Spinach, Sweet

Preparation
190 °F / 87 °C 0 min, 30 sec 5 g 3 OZ / 100 ML

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95
4170 tasting notes

Another lovely tea I get to try from my last Teavivre order. I have absolutely adored past harvests of the other Iron Goddess oolong that Teavivre sells (I think it’s my favorite oolong ever), so I wanted to try this one. I went with one and a half teaspoons leaving one teaspoon in the sample for later. The dry leaves smell so fresh! The taste could not possibly be sweeter. I could swear there is sugar on these leaves. The main characteristic of this flavor is simply sweetness. The other Iron Goddess oolong tastes like a bouquet of flowers. This one is a sweet and delicious oolong – three solid steeps of this lovely flavor. It’s an amazing result, though I do love the bouquet of flowers flavor of the other oolong. Harvest: May 2016
Steep #1 // 1 1/2 teaspoons for a full mug // 15 minutes after boiling // rinse // 2 minute steep
Steep #2 // 10 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep
Steep #3 // just boiled // 3 minute steep

Flavors: Sugar, Sweet

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73
91 tasting notes

Teavivre generously shipped me this and other varieties in their line to sample. The little balls the leaves are hand rolled into are quite pretty. It has a lovely yellow-green colour brewed up and the leaves have a light toasted aroma to them. Overall, the aroma and flavour of the tea is more floral than toasted though. It has a nice elegance to it, a good merge of both floral and vegetal accents. My only point of critique is a minor aftertaste which seems just a little soapy or perfumey.

Flavors: Floral, Vegetal

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 5 min, 0 sec 5 g 12 OZ / 355 ML

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371 tasting notes

This is a part of a tasting activity. Free sample received. Thank you, Angel.

Prepared 4g in a 60ml porcelain gaiwan, then transferred the leaf to 120ml of the same material. Followed the website’s steeping times: 20 seconds, 40, 60, 80, 100, 120. I went with a couple more extended steepings at 4 minutes, 8, and 10 (gotta get it all out).

Going against my expectation, the dry leaf didn’t have much scent, even after resting in the pre-heated gaiwan. The leaf weakly smelled floral and a little buttery and bread-like. The wet leaf aroma is much, much stronger – very floral, evocative of a summer field.

The liquor is pale yellow, full-bodied, clean, and creamy. Throughout the session, there were tiny bits of leaf at the bottom of my cup. The first couple cups are gently floral with a peach aftertaste. They feel easygoing. Beginning with the fourth cup, the flavor has fully developed. The aftertaste really fills the mouth, like a perfume trapped in a bottle. I simply can’t pinpoint specific flowers (I guess this means I have to give myself homework of smelling flowers….or I need to drink more Tie Guan Yin), so I go by feeling, and this very much feels like a bright mid-summer’s day spent in the midst of a wide field. I was relaxed and warmed on this overcast winter morning. Lastly, what is interesting is that, from the fifth cup to the end, the aftertaste changes from a refreshing peach to a cooling sensation.

I haven’t had a Tie Guan Yin in so many months. Lightly oxidized rolled Chinese oolongs don’t appeal to me. Not that I don’t like them – I do, but they’re not a niche I want to explore. That saying, I mostly enjoyed my session with this Tie Guan Yin (I’m little disappointed with the lack of aroma). Pleasant, sweet, floral, a little fruity, and – surprisingly – menthol-like. The floral aspect doesn’t taste powerful or perfumed. It’s just right.

Preparation
Boiling 0 OZ / 0 ML

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