Golden Lily Oolong

The wet leaves in the teapot smelled very strong. Like a heavy mineral scent. In my cup, the tea tasted more mellow and light. Almost a tiny bit floral with hints of cream. The taste of the tea is close to a Ali Shan or Dong Ding with notes of cinnamon bark giving it a woody flavor. Tastes pretty smooth!

I got this tea with my unfortunate teapot purchase late last year, so I assume it’s from 2019. It was kind of Beautiful Taiwan Tea to include a sample. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml porcelain teapot at 195F for 25, 20, 25, 30, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

The dry aroma is of sweet cream, flowers (osmanthus?), cookies, and vegetables. The first steep has notes of cream, butter, orchid, osmanthus, custard, veggies, and grass. I get artichoke and bok choy in the second steep, along with a subtle fruitiness that I can’t pin down. The fourth steep makes me think it might be honeydew. The creamy notes fade as the session progresses, and the floral, honeydew, and vegetal notes take over. Even at the vegetal end of the session, there’s a nice sweetness.

This is a solid Jin Xuan, and while it isn’t my favourite type of Taiwanese oolong, I enjoyed it, especially the surprise fruity note.

13.3g in this 10g sample! Decided to brew gong fu with this one, using half the sample.

Dry tea looks nice, large-medium sized balls and very little dust. Appearance is typical of the style, beautiful dark green that’s somehow “bright” at eh same time. Dry aroma is subtle honey, osmanthus, sweet milk.

Gong fu style:
Filtered tap water at full boil, quick rinse.

1st infusion, full boil, 35 seconds. Aroma is light, sweet grassiness. Wet leaf aroma similar with a bit more osmanthus and milk scent. Pleasant taste and mouthfeel but both a little thin. I used about 5% less tea than I typically do — will try going a bit longer on the next ones. Finish is sweet and vegetal. Milk/buttery flavors are noticeable but quite subtle. Pleasant slight lingering sweetness. Ahh, waited a couple of minutes and there’s the hui gan. Nice.

2nd infusion: full boil, 45 seconds. A bit stronger and darker than 1st infusion but aroma, taste, mouthfeel all similar.Balance now shifts towards more sweetness and less vegetal. Stronger umami

3rd infusion, full boil, 60 seconds. Similar to second in color and mouthfeel; flavor and aroma slightly lower across the spectrum. Very little tannin or bitterness. Strong hui gai on this one!

4th (and final) infusion: full boil, 120 seconds. Nice sweetness now. Aroma has faded but mouthfeel and sweetness are very nice. Honey orchid & osmanthus flavors now. Still not getting a lot of “milk” from this one. (And I despise flavored “jinxuan” so not looking for that.) Very nice lingering sweetness.

Based on this session, I think this tea wants longer brews. Might just do the remainder in 2 small competition-style brews and catch all those layers at once.

Leaves very delicate and tore easily post-infusions. Possibly hand-picked? (They say it is.) Mix of leaf & bud systems & single leaves, even a few long, thin lonely stems. Those leaves that aren’t on stems are quite torn. Almost looks like a mix of hand- and machine-picked, but I’m far from an expert.

Nice tea at a good price ($12.99/56g).

Moderately thick and quite smooth, this Jin Xuan has clarity, strength, and freshness to its milk flavor, paired with a note of buttered greens. A very slight floral and fruity quality is present in the aftertaste, but the predominant flavor is milk.

I am finally catching up on some things both at home and at work, so my tea reviewing schedule is back on track. After three straight days of spring-like warmth, the temperature has plummeted, allowing me the opportunity to indulge in a recently acquired craving for smooth, sweet oolongs. I started on a sample pouch of this one immediately after getting home from work, and I have to say that I find it to be perhaps the most consistent Jin Xuan I have tried, at least to this point.

I prepared this one gongfu style. After a very quick rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose tea leaves in 4 ounces of 195 F water for 10 seconds. This infusion was followed by 13 additional infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 7 seconds, 12 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, and 3 minutes. Yes, I decided to play around with my brewing methods again. No, it will never end.

Prior to the rinse, the dry leaves gave off mild buttery, creamy aromas. The rinse introduced a subtle scent of vanilla frosting. The first infusion produced bolder aromas of cream, butter, vanilla frosting, and daylily shoots. In the mouth, I picked up delicate notes of cream, butter, vanilla frosting, sweetgrass, and daylily shoots. Subsequent infusions introduced floral and fruity qualities. I began detecting mango, papaya, orange, cantaloupe, honeydew, and well, actual daylily as opposed to just daylily shoots. Later infusions were mildly creamy and buttery with the dominant notes of cream and butter underscored by progressively fainter daylily, citrus, vanilla frosting, and melon impressions.

This was really pretty great for a Jin Xuan. Many teas of this type will bludgeon the drinker with over-the-top and/or artificial creaminess, but this one didn’t. It was nicely balanced and I greatly appreciated that. It also displayed wonderful texture and body in the mouth. I could have cut my session short by at least a couple infusions, but I just did not want to because this tea felt so nice. If you are the type of drinker who has ever lamented the lack of subtlety and sophistication in many contemporary Jin Xuans, I would strongly urge you to try this one.

I didn’t really get to properly sit down and enjoy this insisted on somewhat debating with me about something while I was trying to prepare everything and clean up other stuff around me at the same time. I got a few steeps in, but wasn’t able to focus on any of them, so all I can say at the moment is that it’s both vegetal and milky and I’m going to have to give this another go. I enjoyed it as best I could!

Nice milk & cake dough aroma from the steeped leaves, which are nice and juicy & green.

light soup colour with subtle milk & dough aroma. Milky taste, much less fruity than the WP one imo, more vegetal/normal high grown taiwanese taste (not that thats a bad thing at all, on the contrary). A bit sour green when pushed, but at least nice and natural tasting. Nice fresh steamed veg aroma from the steeped leaves.

Great stuff, nice & green & natural tasting with a bit more thicker body than the usual high grown lishans ive tasted

I’ve had the flavored version of this oolong several times, and it’s one of my favorites (not from Beautiful Taiwan, though). So I thought I knew what I was expecting when I brewed this.

It doesn’t taste at all like I would expect. This oolong was more like a Sencha with a meaty, buttery, umami sort of flavor. The mouthfeel was creamy, but the flavor of the liquid wasn’t at all sweet like I was expecting. Still very tasty though. There’s a hint of vegetable in there, but a heavy savory vegetable, like asparagus.

The leaves seem to lose most of their flavor after 2 steepings if you’re brewing western, which seems a little low to me.

I’m still surprised that this does not have a higher rating on here. I’m enjoying it on a cool summer morning with breeze in the trees and the tropical grass aroma blowing into my nose. I steeped this at 3 min, 4, then 5, and I’m pretty sure there’s more to come. It really is similar to Whispering Pine’s Golden Lily, but not quite as tropical. It does, however, have the same creamy texture and sour fruity after taste.

At the same time, I shouldn’t be surprised at the reaction to this tea at all. Jade oolongs on here are really strong hit or misses-most often because of the teas being too vegetal or too floral. I’m certainly generalizing, but those are the trends I see. And given that I enjoy a healthy dose of florals and vegetals, it’s no surprise I prefer them.

Yay! I love Jin Xuan, so I’m excited to try this. I recently came to the belated conclusion that the one I recently loved and raved about from another vendor is artificially flavored, so I am looking for an authentic replacement. Maybe this will be one that I really enjoy! :3

The dry leaves are very green, so this tea seems very fresh. I’m not sure what harvest date this is from, but it looks and smells quite recent. The aroma is floral and buttery. The aroma of the wet leaves is very nice, rich and buttery, very floral, lots of lush aromas of vegetation.

I’m gongfu brewing this. The first infusion has a nice cream flavor and tastes lightly floral as well. In that regard it reminds me of magnolias, or maybe even a really mild lotus flavor.

The second infusion is much more floral, but still has a creamy body and flavor to it as well. There are notes of coniferous tree sap. The taste is less floral as the tea cools.

The third infusion is quite a bit floral as well, but still has that thick creamy note running through it. Flavorwise, it hasn’t change much. It’s more in the balance of the flavors that this tea changes during each infusion.

On the fourth infusion the floral flavor is more of an undertone, blending with a vegetal grassy flavor, and still has a creamy richness to it.

Overall I would say this Jin Xuan was more floral than I expected it to be, and not as milky as the renowned nickname of “milk oolong” makes me think it should be, but it was a nice tea, definitely a crisp and clean one as far as green oolongs go.