The bag almost looks empty, with a few small jasmine pearls. However during steeping, the pearls unravel nicely within the “silk” bag.
The color is a light yellow, though stronger yellow than TenFu’s Jasmine Pearls.
The jasmine tea is very sweet and without any bitterness (at least with 3 to 3 mn 30 steeping time). However I found the jasmine tea overshadowed, both at smelling and at tasting by the rose flavor.
The tea really smells like an oversized rose bouquet or a rose pot-pourri made with fresh petals. Very nice, but to my opinion too strong. When drinking, I did not really manage to identify the delicate jasmine taste hidden under the rose.
It’s supposed to be perfect for pairing with fish and white meat. I could personally never drink this tea with a meal, excluding dessert time.
It’s not subtle or delicate and designed to please rose-flavor addicts.
If I could compare it with a woman portrait, this tea would be a middle-age socialite with platinum perfect hair, perfect clothes but trying to hide her wrinkles by too much foundation and wearing too much perfume.
I had my second sample of Pearl of the Orient today. Still too strong on the rose flavor for my taste, though I appreciate that the rose smells and tastes like a real rose directly picked in a garden and not like artificial rosewater scent.
The taste is rather long lasting and the bag can be resteeped quite a few times. I forgot it during a later steeping today for almost half an hour… I was really wary when tasting it after, that it would be bitter, as most Jasmine teas turn out to be when left more than a few minutes. To my surprise, it was not bitter at all.
Though expensive, I believe it’s rather good value for money, as I steeped in total around 1.5 liter tea with each tea-bag (filled with 2.5g). And I felt I could still go on if I had felt like drinking more rose jasmine.
A must try for the rose flavor addicts