Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Oolong
Where to Buy: Arum Tea
Tea Description:
Full sweet taste with floral fragrance with the hint of honey.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I’ve tasted several different Indonesian teas over the years, but most of the teas from Indonesia that I’ve tried have been either green or black teas, I can’t recall having tried an Oolong from Indonesia! So when my package from Arum Tea arrived today, this was the first tea that I tried.
The tea is packaged in tins with simple yet handsome labeling. I like that the tin has a tight fitting lid and inside the tea was in a vacuum sealed pouch, ensuring a fresh product.
The dry leaf looks a lot like a Tie Guan Yin (perhaps a lightly roasted Tie Guan Yin). The individual leaves have been tightly wound into pellets. I measured out one bamboo scoop of the leaves into my gaiwan and using 180°F water, I performed a 15 second rinse before I infused the leaves for 45 seconds. I strained the tea and then infused the leaves a second time for 1 minute. Both of these infusions were combined into one teacup.
The leaves seem to open similarly to a Tie Guan Yin as well – that is to say, they open very slowly! These leaves are waiting for more infusions!
But first, I need to sit back and enjoy this first cup.
The aroma wafting from my cup is floral, reminiscent of orchid. The flavor is sweet – like honey! The honey is a top note, and just below that sweet honey taste I taste notes of roasted nuts and hints of flower. The sweetness remains on the palate from start to finish and lingers into the aftertaste.
It’s a very satisfying taste. The floral notes are not sharp and they are more like a note in the distance … like the air that filters through a far off meadow and then is delivered to you through a gentle breeze. You can experience those flowers but that essence mingles with a fresh airiness.
Those floral notes emerged in the second cup (the combination of infusions 3 and 4). The tea is still sweet but a bit more crisp and slightly astringent. This cup is not so much honey-esque, the sweetness comes from the flower and the sweet nutty tones that are still very much a part of the flavor of this tea. As the cup cools slightly, the honey notes begin to come forward.
Interestingly enough, I found the honey notes to be at their sweetest for the third cup (infusions 5 and 6). With this cup, the floral notes begin to meld with the nutty flavors and this creates a rather sweet taste as well. The flavors are not sharp. The astringency is mild. This cup is smooth and sweet, sweet, sweet!
Given how much I enjoyed the third cup, I decided to try for one more cup to see how it goes. The fourth cup (infusions 7 and 8) was quite similar to the second cup. The honey notes seemed somewhat muted until the cup cooled a bit, but that gave me a chance to explore the floral notes and the nutty flavors that are now much more a unified flavor. Sweet with both floral and nutty tones and the honey notes coming out to play as the temperature dropped a little. This cup was still so flavorful and refreshing!
This tea is absolutely lovely and I’m really glad that I had this amazing opportunity to try it. I would recommend this to any Oolong lover (especially those of you who love Tie Guan Yin) because it’s a little different … a change of pace. It is familiar enough to a Tie Guan Yin but also deliciously different to keep things exciting for the palate.
