Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Ette Tea
Tea Description:
Mango Sticky Rice is a blend of genmaicha, black tea, roasted barley, mango dices & candied coconut. Very much inspired by the Thai local dessert, the tea brews like a platter of roasted glutinous rice with the coconut and mango coming in towards the finish on the palette.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Mango Sticky Rice green tea from the Singaporean tea company Ette tea hits the nail on the head. I have not had a tea this interesting in a long while. The aroma of the dry leaf is underwhelming, but once you dunk those deep dark emerald leaves, teeny tiny toasted rice kernels, and the stray mango or coconut piece in water, something wickedly good this way comes. The aroma of the steeped leaf is also deceiving, but I must plough through! I still smelled normal genmaicha. Sigh. How could I have let my hopes up when I was feeling a bit betrayed? But then, I took my first sip. And was transported back in time.
I am sitting at a kitchen table, my nose barely peeking over the tabletop. It is a blistering hot summer evening. I must be what, 6? 5? My mother is stirring chunks of irregularly cut mangoes into a pot of rice, sweetened with coconut milk and plenty of sugar. I am absently chewing on the skin of one of her slashed mangoes, trying to suck out all the mango goodness. I wait patiently for her to finish, chomping on my mango skins and gnawing on the massive, surfboard pit. When my mother places a small bowl of mango sticky rice that she learned how to make from her mother, I eagerly grab a spoon and begin to devour all the sweet, fruity, coconutty goodness. I could lick a bowl clean in a matter of seconds.
To me, compliments could not be higher. This tea is so spot on with it’s sticky rice-ness, it’s light hint of mango, and coconut, that I am taken back in time. You know a tea is good by it’s time travelling qualities! I love how straightforward it is. I can pick out each flavor easily and distinctly. The name tells you what you’re going to get, nothing mysterious. But the only mystery to me is, “How did they make this tea so good?”
Medium Roast Dong Ding from The Mountain Tea Company
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Oolong
Where to Buy: The Mountain Tea Company
Tea Description:
The slow roasting of this tea gradually caramelizes its natural sugars and sweetens it, imparting notes of caramel, sweet roasted barley, and brown sugar.
Many of the names related to Taiwanese teas are tea-producing regions, tea-making styles, or both. Dong Ding is a tea gardening region in Nantou, Taiwan whose area name has become eponymous with its style of tea manufacturing. Dong Ding teas have a longer oxidization period and are also slowly baked at a high temperatures, with careful attention to how the flavors and aromas are changing throughout the baking process. The result is caramelized sweetness with a depth and complexity that literally makes your mouth water—it’s a phenomenon the Chinese call “Hui Gan.”
Other names: Tung Ting, 炭焙凍頂
Water: 95°C
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Medium Roast Dong Ding from The Mountain Tea Company is Mmmmmmm delightful! Dong Ding Oolong is my all time favorite tea. This tea brings me back to everything I first loved about loose leaf tea.
The mixture of sweetness with savory notes, the highlight of caramel infused with barley. The roasted flavors that remind me of being in the woods, in nature. The caramelized sugar notes, or brown sugar perhaps. I don’t really even care to dissect it as it is just one of those teas that makes me go “Ahhhhhh” and all I want to do is sit back, more like slink back, into the sofa and enjoy.
Now I was a child of the 70’s and Dong Ding has always reminded me of a very specific aroma, an aroma from a very specific plant species. Dong Ding to me has a lofting aroma of a product from this plant. Was that too vague? Either way, I find myself drawn to this aroma in a strange way. Again, child of the 70’s with a hippie father, perhaps it reminds me of my youth. Regardless, it tastes fabulous.
I really love the lingering floral taste the tea leaves behind. Yes, even beneath all the roasting, the caramel notes, brown sugar notes, sweet barley, and woods, this lovely little spring of floral note comes out just barely gracing your palate. Its lovely!
This is not THE sweetest Dong Ding I have ever tasted, and I do tend to enjoy the sweeter Dong Ding Oolongs, however this is one of the more refreshing Dong Ding Oolongs I have tasted. It leaves your month ready and wanting for more without leaving a drying sensation in the back of the throat or mouth. It makes the mouth water in anticipation of the next sip.
