Mt Alee Taiwan Oolong Spring Tea

I’m so incredibly tired right now – jetlag has turned all my sleeping patterns inside out and upside down – but I’ve been trying to properly test-drive and review this tea for almost two days now, so here goes.

This is an excellent oolong, which is pretty much a given just from the name. There is such a lot to this tea that it’s really hard to do it justice in a description. I’m not completely sure of everything that’s going on in the taste, but it’s definitely complex. It’s got the sort of silky/full/floral sort of taste that you’d expect, and yet it’s not quite like any other Taiwan oolong I’ve tried, either. It’s not quite as milky/buttery as some others I’ve had, plus there’s also a thread of astringency in it that really keeps things interesting, and helps to make this tea both sharp and smooth at the same time. Be careful, though. This tea is very, very sensitive to steeping time. Steep it even 20-30 seconds too long and that edge of astringency will turn into a full-on bitterness that will ruin your cup of tea. I know this because I did it yesterday with the second steeping of my first attempt with this tea.

Each steeping has a very definite character of its own. The second is probably the best – assuming that you don’t accidentally sabotage it – but I’m just finishing the fourth right now, and it still has plenty of body even though the floral notes have faded a bit at this point.