Sipdown (118/125)!
Woot! Look at those numbers drop! Hooray!
But anyway; breakfast tea! And when I say breakfast, I mean that for once I actually drank a tea and consumed a meal at a normal time accurate for meal it’s named for. Shocking, really.
Anyway; I’m almost through my Design A Tea samples. This is the second last one; but I’m gonna finish them off today. This is the only one I picked with an oolong base; and I just went with something safe for it: Pineapple and Coconut which is pretty much just my favourite flavour combination of all time. So it’s kinda 50/50 between having high expectations for the blend, but also knowing without much of a doubt that I’ll enjoy it regardless.
Dry, the pineapple in this smells so strong and intoxicating. You can smell the coconut, but the lush fruit does a pretty damn good job of masking it. Om nom nom, pineapples! And steeped up, this was actually really impressive. The pineapple was really vibrant, juicy and lush and reminded me a lot of the pineapple flavouring in Red Leaf Tea’s Pineapple Matcha (which I find to be very distinct from other pineapple flavourings – such as Butiki’s which has sorta the natural acidic tang to it or DAVIDsTEA’s which is more subtle and candy-like). The coconut was very buttery and tropical and it really complimented the buttery, greener oolong base.
I drank most of this hot, but I let the last few sips go cold and it was probably just as good cold as it was hot; though I thought the coconut and oolong base were more noticeable in the cold tea.
So while this wasn’t exactly a unique or out of the box flavour combination, I think it was a successful one! Definitely quite enjoyable!
Oh, it’s a green oolong? I didn’t expect that. :P
The samples come in little tea bags/satchets (just like this use at cafes or some tea shops for to go teas) – I probably could have taken the tea out to look at it beforehand, but I didn’t. I just picked apart the bag now though, and visually it doesn’t look like a green oolong – although that’s definitely what it tasted like to me.
That’s interesting. I’m glad you tried it first because now I can keep that in mind when I design my teas later. :P Thanks for taking one for the team! ;)
The “oolong” in the generic drop down choice is a Formosa (higher oxidized) but they also have a greener Ti Kuan Yin available… if that helps.
http://www.designatea.com/products.php?cat=13