Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Oolong
Where to Buy: Oollo Tea
Tea Description:
Renowned for its beautiful five colour dancing leaves. This traditional beauty exudes apricot and peach scents followed by indulging orchid, muscat grape, and apple flavours.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Oollo Tea offers some outstanding teas and this Oriental Beauty Oolong is a perfect example. It’s one of the nicest Bai Hao Oolong teas that I’ve tasted in a quite some time!
The aroma is lovely – it reminds me of warm peaches – like the filling in a peach cobbler. Warm and bubbly and sweet! That’s what I think of when I smell this tea!
The tea has a wonderful fruit flavor – I taste stone fruit and flower. The above description suggests orchid and when I focus on the floral notes, yes, I would say that the flower I taste is indeed orchid. I taste notes of peach and apricot and hints of a honeyed sweetness.
I don’t taste muscat grape or apple yet, but perhaps those flavors will reveal themselves in later infusions. For now, I’m quite happy with the notes of honey, orchid and peach-y apricot!
With my second cup (infusions 3 and 4) I am picking up some of those aforementioned notes of grape and apple. Really nice! I taste less of the peach and apricot flavors – those seemed to have disappeared – but I still taste a lovely orchid note and a lovely sweetness that I’d describe as more of a sugary sweetness now rather than a honey-like sweetness. This tastes a bit like the sugar notes I’d experience if I were to eat a handful of raisins.
This cup is really smooth with just a hint of astringency toward the tail. I taste a light, hay-like note to this too, similar to what I’d taste from a Bai Mu Dan (white tea). Every once in a while, I’ll also taste the slightest whisper of vanilla.
I started to notice the flavor waning with my third cup (infusions 5 and 6), so I decided it would be my last of this tea. But I had three marvelous cups of tea! The third cup still had plenty of flavor – lovely notes of apple and grape and almost a melon-like background note that I hadn’t noticed in the previous infusions! Still sweet, still lovely.
A really wonderful tea – this Oriental Beauty from Oollo Tea! If you haven’t checked out their website yet, you should stop in and check them out!
Rohini Jethi Kupi Black Tea from Udyan Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Udyan Tea
Tea Description:
Jethikupi is a word from the Manipuri dialect (from the North-east Indian State of Manipur) and it means ‘jasmine flower.’ In the Nepali dialect the word ‘jethi’ means the eldest girl child, while ‘kupi’ is a funnel or cone shaped object. Hence this tea points out to the earliest first flush of the tea garden. Rohini Jethi Kupi Black Tea brews into a crisp, full bodied, deep yellow cup with a malty finish.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I have enjoyed the different teas that I’ve received from Udyan Tea to review. But I – without realizing it – think I may have saved the very best for last because this Rohini Jethi Kupi Black Tea is absolutely DELIGHTFUL.
It has that crisp and clean flavor that you expect from a first flush Darjeeilng tea, but this is more full flavored. It has notes of malt! It has a richness to the flavor and it’s nicely round. It’s not “heavy” – it is crisp and light, but it’s not quite as light as a typical first flush Darjeeling. This has a more robust body to it and it’s SO wonderfully sweet!
It’s nice and smooth with very little astringency and absolutely no bitterness. It even has hints of muscatel to it – a note that I don’t usually expect in a first flush Darjeeling, but am always happy to find when I do find it.
This is exactly the tea I needed this afternoon. I’ve been a little stressed out lately (I’ve been SO busy!) and I needed some time to just sit back and have a tea that tastes so good that the stress melts away. This tea did exactly that for me. This is one of the best first flush Darjeeling teas I’ve tried this year. I highly recommend it!
Gopaldhara Spring Special Black Tea from Udyan Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black (Darjeeling)
Where to Buy: Udyan Tea
Tea Description:
Goapldhara is one of the highest tea estates of Darjeeling and is located in the Mirik valley. The garden is planted with high quality clonal bushes and produces exquisite teas. Gopaldhara First Flush Darjeeling Tea has a floral aroma and a sweet & mellow taste. A great tea to relax and refresh your mind.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Oh. My. Goodness! What a lovely Darjeeling!
I steeped this Gopaldhara Spring Special Black Tea from Udyan Tea in my Breville One-Touch, and I was a little surprised when the tea maker finished it’s cycle – the tea is not black. It’s not even coppery. It’s yellow! Like the color of melted butter that had been slightly browned – but only ever so slightly – still more yellow than brown.
Parameters: I measured 2 bamboo scoops of tea in the basket of my Breville and added 500ml of freshly filtered water to the jug. Then I set the temperature for 195°F and the timer for 2 1/2 minutes.
But don’t let this rather unusual color for a ‘black’ tea freak you out – this is some seriously good stuff! Think of it as liquid gold.
Mmm!
Really smooth – much smoother than I’m used to from a Darjeeling. There is some dry astringency toward the tail – but not a lot. No bitterness. Now, I can’t say that you wouldn’t experience those things if you brewed it at a different temperature (I find that with Darjeeling, it’s important to keep the temperature below boiling because the boil is a tad too hot for Darjeeling tea) and a different steep time (2 1/2 minutes is my sweet spot when it comes to Darjeeling tea).
This is sweet and floral. No overt sharpness from the floral notes, it’s very soft and beautiful. There are some delicate fruit notes to this – more like a citrus note than a grape-y note like you might experience from other Darjeeling teas. Imagine a splash of a fruity/grape-y wine added to your orange juice and you would have the fruit-like notes I’m experiencing.
But mostly, what I taste is a delightful medley of flower.
It’s soft and pleasant – a lovely afternoon tea. This is the kind of tea you want to serve to people you want to impress. They’ll be impressed!
Truly a remarkable tea – beautiful!
Golden Monkey Black Tea by Teavivre
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Teavivre
Tea Description:
Coming from Fujian, the Golden Monkey is made of the fresh buds and leaves of Fuding Pekoe, by lightly sun withering, rolling, fermentation and drying. Golden Monkey has the particular aroma of black tea. You could scent the fruity flavor through every sip of the tea.
The golden hairy tips truly make this tea more attractive. This is one reason why it is called Golden Monkey. Another reason is its monkey-claw-liked shape of the dry tea, which is in golden and black color. When brewed, the Golden Monkey Tea tastes brisk and smooth for the first sip, presenting a distinctive flavor. If you like stronger flavor, you could brew for a longer time. The sweet aftertaste could act faster for thicker liquid. You could only feel it when trying by yourself.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
In my opinion, Golden Monkey is a Teavivre classic – one that all tea lovers (and particularly black tea lovers) should try at some point. It’s a cupboard staple for me, perfect in any season, and at any time of the day or night. It’s a real comfort tea, for me. Reliable, versatile, and tasty to boot! I used 1 tsp of leaf for my current cup, and gave it approximately 2.5 minutes in boiling water. The resulting liquor is lightly golden, the scent sweet and malty with an underlying hint of grain. I’m drinking it without additions today, hence the reasonably low steep time on this occasion, but it also works well with a 4 minute brew and a splash of milk.
One of the reasons I like this one so much is its almost intensely chocolatey initial flavour. It’s like a square of high quality dark chocolate; bittersweet, with an edge of dark, dry cacao. The malty notes emerge in the mid-sip, and make this a much sweeter prospect, which becomes a little reminiscent of molasses. It’s by no means overpowering, though – there’s just a hint of something treacley lurking in the background. Notes of baked bread, grain and a light nuttiness develop towards the end of the sip, along with a smooth caramel richness.
I like that this can be a layered, nuanced cup without milk – there’s a lot to taste, but it all somehow works together to create a flavourful, full-bodied cup that’s immensely satisfying. It’s a little more generic with milk, which seems to flatten some of the flavours and drown others, but I can enjoy it either way. A cup with milk typically features, for me, a stronger note of baked bread, a little chocolate, and a similar level of malt and grain. It’s a slightly altered, less intense flavour profile, but sometimes that’s exactly what I want. Golden Monkey is tea that suits any mood. Once you’ve tried it, you’ll never look back.
Menghai Wangshuji Shou Pu-erh in Seventh Grade 2008 from Wymm Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Pu-erh
Where to Buy: Wymm Tea
Tea Description:
This shou pu-erh brews with a rich and honey flavor and long-lasting jasmine rice aroma. Full tea leaves from high mountains in Menghai County, located in west of Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan Province, are picked to make the tea in 2008. Pu-erh tea has the potential to ferment over time, and this tea has been post-fermented for 6 years since production. Post-fermentation gives the tea vibrant flavours and richer aroma as well as deep wine colour.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This Menghai Wangshuji Shou Pu-erh in Seventh Grade 2008 is the fourth of the teas that I was sent by Wymm Tea in their lovely sampler presentation package. These samplers come beautifully wrapped in a milk-carton shaped box. (You can see the box in this review.)
As I’ve mentioned many times: pu-erh just isn’t my favorite type of tea. But, after trial and error, I learned the ways to best brew pu-erh to my liking and I’ve come to appreciate it. It still isn’t my favorite, but I can say that I enjoy pu-erh tea.
When it comes to pu-erh, though, I find that I tend to prefer sheng to shou. What’s the difference? Well, I’m no expert on the subject of pu-erh, but what I’ve come to understand is that sheng tea is raw tea material that has been aged while shou tea is cooked tea material which seems to accelerate the aging process a bit. Why do I prefer sheng? Because while my experience with pu-erh is rather limited (again, I’m no expert!), my limited experience has taught me that shou pu-erh tends to be the pu-erh that sometimes has a briny or fishy flavor and the shou pu-erh tends to be the earthiest tasting (as in, it sometimes tastes of dirt).
But NOT this shou! This is LOVELY! This is so lovely that it has me rethinking my stance on pu-erh!
Sweet! Mellow! Smooth! All those words come to mind as I sip this. I taste no brine, no fish, no strong earthy dirty flavors. Just wonderfully mellow flavors. A sweet honeyed undertone with hints of burnt sugar caramel. I taste notes of earth but not dirt. This is more like damp, woodsy notes, evoking thoughts of a walk through the old-growth forests here in the Pacific Northwest after it rained. (We get some rain up here.)
I also taste very subtle hints of rice. The description of the tea suggests a jasmine rice note, I don’t know if it’s jasmine rice that I taste (I’m very familiar with jasmine rice as it’s my go-to rice in my pantry), but then again, this is only my first cup – perhaps those flavors will reveal themselves in later infusions. For now, I find myself in awe of the beautiful honey notes. So sweet. So delightful.
With my second cup, those aforementioned jasmine rice notes begin to emerge. I taste less of that honey flavor, but more of the sweet rice flavor and that’s quite pleasant. The flavor is still very mellow and smooth but it’s deeper and stronger than the first cup. I taste notes of burnt sugar and rice, hints of flower and a soft woodsy note. I love that there’s not even a hint of astringency or bitterness here. Just lovely!
I enjoyed this tea immensely! The later infusions (I got eight infusions out of this tea!) were just as mellow and smooth – but with each infusion, I found a deeper flavor. I never really experienced any strong earthy notes – bonus! – and I enjoyed a lovely sweetness from the notes of rice and hints of molasses and honey. A truly remarkable shou! This is the shou I’d recommend to someone who has had some unfavorable experiences in the past with shou pu-erh, this tea will change your mind about shou!