Leaf Type: Oolong
Where to Buy: Yezi Tea
Tea Description:
Just as many people call Wimbledon tennis’s most important Grand Slam tournament, many a tea connoisseur likes to think of Jin Xuan as the most important oolong to come out of Taiwan. Jin Xuan is grown at 7,500 feet above sea level. At this altitude, the tea leaves are worked upon by hot days and extremely cold nights. These varying climatic conditions, along with a year-round fog, lend this tea a complex and diverse palette of flavors and sensations.
Like most Taiwanese oolongs, Jin Xuan has a naturally sweet flavor. After your first sip, you might find yourself thinking of sugarcane reeds swaying and glistening in the sunshine. However, after a few more brewings of this loose-leaf tea, its accompanying floral and tangerine scents will transport your imagination to a lush green orchard. Grown in the cool, high altitudes of Hualien County, Yezi’s Jin Xuan is brought to you from local tea farmer Gao Xiu Chen and is an ideal beverage for cooling you off on a hot summer day.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I have been looking forward to my tea time with this Jin Xuan Oolong Tea from Yezi Tea all day! I drink tea daily, and I drink a LOT of tea daily. But the time that I spend with an Oolong is special for me, because I love the complexity of an Oolong. I love that I can keep steeping and steeping and explore so many different layers of flavors with an Oolong. It’s such a relaxing and wonderfully contemplative experience!
And this Jin Xuan from Yezi is top-notch! So sweet and creamy! This first cup of tea (infusions 1 and 2 following a 15 second rinse) is very smooth and has a lightness to it that I’m sure will probably be gone with subsequent infusions. The creamy texture is so delicate and really lovely. I taste notes of flower. Not sharp or perfume-y, these floral notes reside in the background at the moment, as if to let me know that they will soon be a bigger part of what I’ll be enjoying soon.
My second cup (infusions 3 and 4) is indeed creamier and richer than the first was. The floral tones are beginning to emerge now, but they remain pleasantly soft and sweet. The cup is sweet and creamy and the mouthfeel is somewhat milky.
The third cup (a combination of infusions 5 and 6) is my favorite of the three cups that I enjoyed of this tea. It is a delicious balance of silky creaminess and sweet floral tones. It still has that milky texture. And as the above description suggests, I do notice a hint of tangerine to the aroma when I inhale before a sip, and this influences the sip in a very delightful way, adding a hint of fruity finish to the sip.
A really FANTASTIC tea journey awaits you with this tea … I highly recommend it.