Wild Cultivar Oolong (Eastern Camellia Formosensis)

Why was I compelled to buy a tea that has such poor reviews? Because sometimes I’m stupidly curious and I’ve never had a piss poor oolong that’s gotten terrible reviews.

Spring 2018 harvest. To start, these are some giant nugs and they’re shades of green I’ve never seen in unroasted oolong. They smell like roasted walnuts, crispy rice, green cardamom, deep vegetal, violet? and toasted marshmallow. Wut. A few notes I’ve never experienced before. Warmed in the teapot then rinsed, they release aromas of spinach, sugarcane, sake, rice, herbs and cardamom. Very vegetal, savory and sweet.

Five grams of leaves in my 100mL teapot produces 5 steeps at 30/45/60/70/90s. The liquor starts off strongly with spinach, herbal medicine, sugarcane, and lemon water, retaining those notes throughout. A penetrating bitterness comes in on the second steep along with bold, savory sake without the alcohol. That clear, light yellow liquor is producing an unexpected intensity in flavor. After I’m done with the second cup, a strong returning sweetness hits the back of the throat and comes up up up, like ‘Hey, lemme out here!’ Later, some aftertastes of butter and rice appear. The texture is smooth but drying, not thick or thin or anything else. I suppose it’s just there. The bottom of the cup smells like a medicinal sake and also like some sencha I’ve had before.

This is certainly a different oolong and one I’m actually really glad to have experienced. I can see it being appealing to a very small subset of seasoned oolong drinkers looking for a change of pace or even sippers with a taste for the burly but this Wild Cultivar is definitely not for those looking for a refined, floral experience. That said, I might be in that small subset. I won’t order this batch again but I’ll have no problem finishing off the other 5 grams. If MST ever offers this Wild Cultivar again, I’ll buy another 10g sample.

Oh yeah, some of these giant nugs unfurl into leathery GIANT LEAVES. The biggest tea leaves I’ve ever seen in my life — some pushing 15cm in length. I feel like I should dry them out in my plant press and mount them.

This is a very unusual tea. It literally smells and tastes like fenugreek. If someone gave me this labelled as fenugreek tea, I wouldn’t doubt them for a second.

The dry leaf aroma is very weak and slightly vegetal. In the wet leaf I can smell just … fenugreek. And some milk in the background. First infusion was super light with almost no taste, but the later ones were ok. I could taste fenugreek, some bay leaves and gastric acid (no kidding!). It is somewhat savoury and bitter, and overall quite imbalanced. It has light body and the mouthfeel is powdery and drying.

All in all, not a very good tea, unless you are in love with fenugreek (which I actually quite like personally). I can’t deny that it’s a unique experience though.

Been down with a head cold for the past week which has impaired my sense of taste and smell and relegated me to mostly genmaicha. Sucks, but almost a given whenever the seasons change. In the meantime, I’ll be reviewing a few teas from the backlog.

This wild Taiwanese oolong varietal was the most interesting sounding tea from my Mountain Streams sampler pack but unfortunately it turned out to be a huge dud. I suspected it was stale as soon as I opened the pouch. There was a vague aroma of cooked turnips in the dry leaf and stir fried vegetables, corn, and spinach following a rinse. However the taste was musty and really stale. It had almost no flavor as if the tea had lost its freshness a long time ago. Don’t know what’s up with that since this was a vacuum sealed pouch.