Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Oolong
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Tea Description:
Here’s a premium oolong tea from the Fujian province in China blended with large pieces of freeze-dried Fuji apples and natural and organic flavors. And no, I didn’t mistype: Fujian Oolong and Fuji apples. Serendipitous. I didn’t even realize I had done that until I typed it.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
For the purposes of this review, I brewed and tasted this tea a couple of different ways.
The first way was to use my gaiwan as the brewing vessel, and using short steeps, starting with just 30 seconds and adding 15 seconds to each subsequent infusion. Surprisingly, the first two infusions were a bit of a disappointment. I found them to be somewhat chemical-y tasting, kind of artificial. Not so much that I was repulsed and needed to dump the cup, but, enough to register disappointment in what I was tasting.
Fortunately, this chemical-ish note waned after the first two infusions, and after that I was enjoying a lovely roasted Oolong flavor and a delicious caramel-y note. These two flavors meld so deliciously! The warm, roasty-toasty, slightly smoky note of the Oolong and the caramel were just delightful. At this point, I didn’t notice a whole lot of apple taste, until the fourth infusion, and then I started to notice a sweet-tart taste of apple – tasting a bit like a Jonagold apple to me – as the sip moved toward the finish and this apple note lingered in the aftertaste, along with the sweet, toasty flavor of the Oolong and a hint of caramel-y taste.
Using my gaiwan, I got quite a few infusions from the same measurement of leaves – eight! I stopped after eight, not because I couldn’t get more, but because my curiosity was piqued about using my Breville One-Touch for this same tea.
And I have to say, that I found myself far less disappointed by the infusion from my Breville than I was with the initial brewing in the gaiwan (although, the subsequent infusions in the gaiwan were certainly well worth that effort!) I find that I can taste all the elements of this tea in this very first cup from my Breville: I taste the roasted flavor of the Oolong and the sweet-tart apple, as well as the sweet, burnt sugar taste of caramel. YUM!
I think that this tea is delicious brewed either way … if you’ve the patience to use your gaiwan and steep it several times like that, by the time you reach the fourth infusion, the cup is very gratifying. But for a sensational first cup, I’d go with a less traditional method … either by teapot or Breville One-Touch, if you’ve got one!
