Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Yellow
Where to Buy: Life in Teacup
Tea Description:
This is a Yellow Tea made with earliest spring leaves. The oxidation is light. It’s flavor is closed to that of green tea, with more honey sweet aftertaste due to oxidation.
Taster’s Review:
What a remarkable yellow tea. Of course, I’ve loved every yellow tea that I’ve tried, however, there is something about this one that gives it a uniqueness over the others that I’ve tasted. While other yellow teas have a somewhat delicate quality about them, this one seems to be more assertive.
Immediately, I noted the sweetness which is more like a sweet grass kind of flavor during the sip and becomes more honey-like toward the tail and into the aftertaste, revealing a bit of the floral tones of the honey-esque sweetness with the aftertaste. After the first couple of sips, I tasted notes of hay and a delicate earthiness that provided interesting contrast to the honey tones.
As I progressed toward mid-cup, other flavors revealed themselves. I could taste a mild vegetable flavor, reminiscent of lima beans that have been simmered in a kettle for hours … you know, that sweet, buttery lima bean flavor that reminds you of home? The flavor is remarkably smooth, with no bitterness and only a trace of astringency at the tail.
A delicious yellow tea that offers a memorable tea journey from the very first sip right down to the very last drop.
Eight Oasis Blend from Praise Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green, White & Pu-erh Teas
Where to Buy: Praise Tea
Tea Description:
Our combination of Sencha, Gunpowder, Mini Tuo, Chun Mee, Pai Mu Tan, Lung Ching, Snow Bud, Pi Lo Chun, candied pineapple and strawberry takes you to an oasis of delight. Delectable both hot and cold. Try some with white crystal sugar. Indulge your taste buds.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
After a quick glance at this tea’s ingredient list, I thought that this tea may just have a little too much going on. It smelled intriguing, though, with its delicious notes of strawberry and pineapple, so I decided to give it a try.
And somehow, this massive list of ingredients works together very well! While it is next to impossible to pick out each individual tea’s characteristics, I can taste the fresh, vegetative flavor of green tea, a light earthy quality from the tuocha, and I can even taste notes that are very much like white tea – notes of hay and that crisp, airy quality that is often noted in white tea.
The strawberry and pineapple notes are less distinctive than the flavors of the tea, but, that’s alright. In fact, I find it to be quite refreshing to have the tea as the center focus in this cup, and have the fruit flavors to serve as accent notes to enliven the overall flavor. The place where the fruit really stands out is in the aftertaste, where I can taste the flavors of both the pineapple and the strawberry.
This tea does have a natural sweetness to it, so I would recommend tasting before you sweeten. I did end up adding just a pinch of sugar which helped to enhance the fruit notes more than sweeten the cup. Without the sugar, the fruit notes fall a little flat … they’re still present, but, just not as lively as with a pinch of sugar.
This one makes a nice iced tea too. I recommend steeping it at least twice, as it is even tastier with the second infusion.