Visually, this tea reminds me of the Blink Bonnie from the now departed LeafSpa. Definitely a more interesting than usual look.
The Blink Bonnie was a green tea and this is a Sri Lankan oolong. Interestingly, Blink Bonnie was also a Sri Lankan tea — it was Indulgashinna as well. It appears that Blink Bonnie may be an estate, but it also appears that Indulgashinna makes more than its share of these twisty leafed teas.
Sri Lankan oolongs generally aren’t among my favorites, but I might have to make an exception for this one — mostly because I just looked on the Shanti site and they don’t have it available anymore.
It would be a shame not to have in my collection a tea that looks like this. It’s just too cool.
In aroma and flavor, this isn’t like the typical green oolong, nor is it like the typical dark. It has a sort of wine-like note to it, but it’s not overly sharp. I am afraid I’m relegated to describing it more by what it is not than by what it is.
Not: floral, orchid, lilac, dairy, butter, milk, toasty, roasty, woody, smoky, stonefruit
The best I can come up with is nutty-honey-grapey-wine. The tea starts out a sort of butter yellow and becomes a darker gold with repeated steepings. I rinsed and steeped in the gaiwan at 195F for 15 seconds and added 5 seconds more each time, for five steeps.
Something to hold onto until it returns to Shanti or another Indulgashinna distributor turns up — but most of its points are attributable to the visual rather than the flavor.
Flavors: Honey, Nutty, White Grapes, White Wine
Sounds interesting! What-Cha used to carry teas from this estate, though they don’t seem to anymore.
It is very interesting!