Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black … or … Oolong
Where to Buy: T-Oolong Tea
Tea Description:
This high quality Taiwan Honey Black Tea Oolong is all natural, handpicked, handcrafted and produced from Qingxin Dapa varietal, the tea leaves used to produce Oriental Beauty. This tea has an intense honey aroma and taste, very pleasant and enjoyable. The taste is a mixture of black tea and oriental beauty oolong. This tea is very rich, complex, smooth and delectable with almost no bitterness and astringency. The aftertaste is very sweet and long lasting and makes you want another sip.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
At first glance, it might appear that this tea suffers from an identity crisis or perhaps a split personality. At the very least, it probably seems confused.
From what I understand of this tea, the leaves that would generally be used to make an Oriental Beauty Oolong are used to make this tea: fermented to the point of being deemed a black tea. I could be wrong, and if any of my readers know more about this particular tea, please feel free to comment as I’d love to learn a little more about it.
What I do know, though, is that this is delicious! Sweet and rich – with notes of chocolate and caramel throughout the sip. This is reminiscent of a favorite tea that some of us on Steepster probably remember quite fondly: Dawn from the Simple Leaf. The Simple Leaf has since closed shop, but the memories of this tea linger! It was a remarkable tea, and this Honey Black Tea Oolong is, at the very least, equally as remarkable.
The honey notes are profound, and meld deliciously with the caramel-y notes to create a honey-caramel taste that is lip-smackingly delectable. It has a dense richness to it, a creamy sort of mouthfeel with very little astringency. After the first few sips which are indulgently honey-esque, I start to notice hints of fruit and even a floral note somewhere in the distance. These are notes that require a bit of a “slurp” to really detect, because the chocolate-y, caramel-y notes are so forward that the other notes seem quite content to tantalize from afar.
A really delightful tea – if you miss Dawn from The Simple Leaf … try this tea! If you like sweet, naturally chocolate notes in your black tea … try this tea! If you like the mouthfeel of an Oolong but want something richer and deeper … you know what I’m going to say, don’t you? Try this tea!
