Tea Information:

Leaf Type:  Oolong

Where to Buy:  Dachi Tea

Tea Description:

With tea making methods borrowed from the Sun Moon Lake style, the Honeysuckle Oolong’s deep cocoa and plum aroma eases you into a baked fruit flavor with a lasting honey nectar finish. With its natural sweetness and full-bodied flavor, this is one of those teas which has you constantly sipping and subconsciously craving more.

Learn more about this tea here.

Taster’s Review:

I’ve been eagerly awaiting the time when I could review this Honeysuckle Oolong Tea from Dachi Tea!  This company was launched thanks to a successfully funded Kickstarter campaign that ended at the beginning of January.  I managed to do one review of their four teas from their inaugural collection before their Kickstarter campaign reached it’s deadline.  Once the campaign had come to a successful close, I held off on doing a review until they launched their new website so that people could get their hands on some of these fantastic teas!

And this Honeysuckle Oolong Tea is amazing.  It’s reminiscent of a Sun Moon Lake black tea – in fact, given that this says that it’s fully oxidized, I think this might actually BE a black tea.  It’s a little lighter than a typical black tea though, it doesn’t have a really strong, robust, kick your butt into gear type of flavor that say an Assam or even a high quality Ceylon would have.  It’s lighter, sweeter and more reminiscent of an Oolong in that way.

The flavor is sweet with notes of flower, so I think that the name “honeysuckle” is quite appropriate.  Those sweet, honeyed flavors mingle beautifully with a deep, stone fruit flavor.  The description above suggests plum and I would agree with that assessment.  I even get a slight ‘sour’ note that arrives about mid sip – similar to what I might experience if I were to bite into a fresh, tree-ripened, juicy plum.

The description above also suggests a chocolate/cocoa flavor and I do get hints of that.  The hints of cocoa are hardly something that this chocoholic would call ‘chocolate’ but I do understand the comparison.  It’s a subtle insinuation of chocolate and makes me hope that subsequent infusions would lead me to a stronger chocolate-y taste.

Yes!  My second cup (infusions three and four) was certainly more chocolate-y than the first.  I also noticed, though, that the texture was a bit thinner than the first cup which lead me to surmise that while this tea is certainly a spectacular tea – it’s not quite as ‘go the long haul’ as a typical Oolong.  This is more ‘black tea’ in that respect.  You’ll get a really lovely cuppa for the early infusions but the flavors begin to wane pretty quickly with this one.

Don’t let that sway you from trying this tea – it’s a lovely Sun Moon Lake type black tea and I’d recommend steeping it as such so that you can get that rich, amazing flavor as a Sun Moon Lake type black, rather than steeping this like an Oolong (in a gaiwan).  Next time, I’ll be reaching for either my Kati Tumbler or brewing it in my Breville One-Touch instead.  The gaiwan efforts – while absolutely LOVELY – seem a bit more intensive than necessary for a wonderful cuppa when the flavors aren’t going to go for more than a few infusions.

Yet another lovely tea from Dachi – I look forward to exploring the other two with you!