Taiwan Gui Fei Oolong Tea

I received this tea as a sample in my last What-Cha order. It was harvested and roasted in 2020. I steeped the entire 6 g in a 120 ml teapot at 200F for 25, 20, 25, 30, 30, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

Dry, this tea has the typically lovely aroma of a Gui Fei: honey, baked bread, stewed fruit, citrus, and grass. The first steep gives me honey, grapefruit, grains, roast, wood, and minerals, with a strange nutty and chicory-type aftertaste at the back of the throat. The grapefruit gets stronger in the next steep, but so does the astringency. I also get citrus, honey, sap, roasted almonds, and roast. I let the third steep cool and the nutty flavour intensifies, along with the grapefruit and piny notes. It kind of tastes like an IPA. There are beautiful peach and nectarine notes in steep five to compensate for the growing astringency. In the next few steeps, the grapefruit, roasted nuts, honey, and grains don’t go away, but the growing astringency makes the tea less enjoyable. The session ends with malt, nuts, earth, wood, minerals, honey, and faint grapefruit.

Although I enjoyed some aspects of this Gui Fei, particularly the grapefruit, the roast and astringency were more pronounced than I usually like. What-Cha says this tea improves with age, and maybe I should have stored this sample in my tea museum for a couple years before trying it. I’d say it’s decent for the price if you like this type of tea, which I certainly do.

This was one of my sipdowns from the first half of April. I don’t know why, but I just have had a hard time getting around to posting a review of this tea. I’m guessing the fact that it offered such a roller coaster of a drinking experience has had something to do with that. This tea was different literally every single time I tried it and was up and down over the entirety of every gongfu session I attempted.

It should come as no surprise that I primarily prepared this tea gongfu style. For the review session, I started off by steeping 6 grams of rolled tea leaves in 4 ounces of 203 F water for 8 seconds following the rinse. This infusion was followed by 17 subsequent infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 10 seconds, 12 seconds, 16 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 7 minutes, 10 minutes, and 15 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea leaves emitted aromas of roasted almond, brown sugar, toast, honey, chocolate, nectarine, and citrus. After the rinse, I detected aromas of rose, vanilla, and butter alongside a clearly defined grapefruit scent. The first infusion introduced aromas of candied pomelo, orange zest, and plum. In the mouth, the tea liquor offered notes of grapefruit, candied pomelo, toast, roasted almond, and plum that were chased by hints of orange zest, vanilla, brown sugar, rose, cream, butter, and pear. The impressions of cream, butter, vanilla, and orange zest grew stronger after the swallow, lingering in the mouth and throat for a considerable time. The subsequent infusions introduced aromas of pear, peach, cherry, cinnamon, juniper, malt, earth, apple, and grass. Stronger and more immediate notes of rose, vanilla, cream, butter, pear, and orange zest came out in the mouth alongside notes of peach, minerals, apple, cherry, malt, lemon zest, and juniper. I also found notes of honey and nectarine and subtle hints of grass, earth, nutmeg, cinnamon, and chocolate. As the tea faded, the liquor emphasized notes of minerals, cream, vanilla, roasted almond, toast, pear, cherry, and orange zest that were balanced by hints of lemon zest, grapefruit, peach, grass, juniper, malt, and honey.

This was a very interesting and often somewhat challenging Gui Fei oolong. It was quite heavy on the fruitier aromas and flavors, which I definitely liked about it, but it also did not offer a consistent drinking experience from infusion to infusion or session to session. There were definite peaks and valleys over the course of my review session and every other session I tried with this tea. In the end, I found that I respected it a little more than I enjoyed it as it was a rather fussy, temperamental tea that offered respectable longevity and complexity but not the kind of accessibility and reliability I tend to expect of most Gui Fei oolongs.

August 2017 harvest.

I’ve tried brewing this tea both western and gongfu so far. I also have a a liter cold brewing in the fridge and am planning on doing a grandpa test in my thermos to judge the tea’s viability as a ‘school brew.’ I’ll update the review and rating after trying the other 2 methods, but for now:

Western: 3g, 8oz, 205F, 3/4/5min. Light-bodied and a little viscous, tastes of honey and light roast. Some light astringency and a ruby red grapefruit aftertaste. Pretty average tea. Third steep wasn’t worth it as the astringency became overbearing.

Gongfu: 2.5g, 60mL, 195F. 10s rinse followed by 7 steeps at 10/15/20/25/30/45/60s.
In an attempt to reduce the astringency present when brewed western style, I dialed the temp back 10 degrees. Dry leaf smelled of mostly roast and honey, warmed had the addition of wheat toast. A 10s rinse allowed citrus to come forward in the leaf. The tea started off very light and citrusy in flavor with some astringency. It thickened up quickly. Ruby red grapefruit and some salivation came out and there was a short-lived honeyed grapefruit aftertaste. The astringency was a mainstay even with a lower temperature. Drinking it while having a snack did keep the astringency at bay and allowed the flavors to pop out more.

The tea does have a nice, light taste that would make this a good beginner’s oolong but I hesitate to recommend it as as such due to the astringency. I’d point somebody to What-Cha’s Vietnam Gui Fei over this tea especially since the Vietnamese version is at the time negligibly more expensive.

I received this as an extra with a tea order from What-Cha. It’s a pleasant oolong with a slightly nutty smell and taste. I’m not sure if there is a name for it but I have found that there are oolongs that are a bit closer to green tea and some that are a bit closer to black tea. This one is closer to a black tea. It is not at all astringent. I think this would be an easy tea for anyone to drink. It’s very approachable.

Paging Daylon or other what-cha oolong fans..

I’ve got a damn cold again, so my taste might be way off, but I found a blank sample pack with ‘taiwan gui fei oolong what-cha’ written on it. As it wasnt in its original, thats usually reserved for teas I take to my girlfriends, or out with me – had a look inside, rolled oolong, good for colds – I guessed it might not be that special.. as its in a blank pack.

Wow, its amazing. The first few steeps are like orange and something. A bit like yancha? I dont know, its totally muddled but tastes gorgeous.

Out of stock at what-cha and I cant find a review here, so I have no idea, but its really good.

ends up being a sweet almost dongfang meiren sweet wood tangy something oolong base. Its really nice. I dont usually like orangey oolongs, this was special though

I dont know much about this apart from the early part of the session was totally lovely. Now, I may be wrong about its taste, everything tastes either odd or amazing when I have a cold.
Often better because my stuffed nose captures a tonne of aroma.

I’m thinking nose plugs might be a thing for tea tasting. ? lol

Anyone with more info on this one, would love to chat about it! I sent Alistair a message asking if he can get more.