Oriental Beauty Oolong Tea

Received a small sample of this tea at last year’s Tea Festival in Vancouver which I finally got to today (sadly I’m failing miserably at my goal of consuming tea within 12 months of purchase for most of my cupboard stock). The appearance of the leaves are quite pretty with both greenish and brown hues. Oollo describes the appearance of their blend as “five colour dancing leaves”. Some of the leaves almost have a twig-like appearance with their rust colouring. Brewed up, there is a lovely earthy aroma that has a crisp and clean woodsy flavour. I didn’t detect the apricot, peach, orchid, muscat grape or apple flavours that Oollo notes but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Maybe those accents have faded with time or weren’t as prominent in my sample. I’m really enjoying all of the oolongs I’ve tried from Oollo so far.

I have a forest full of cicada noises inside my head. My head and ear hurt. I am a big baby when I don’t feel good. I thought tea would make me feel better. It helped but really this tea deserves a better review than it is about to get.

I grabbed this for the tea sap sucking leaf hopper vampire connection. Seemed appropriate. The leaf, despite the vampire bites, are beautiful. They are brown, cinnamon, green, white, with touches of yellow. It is composed of leaves and buds on stems. I don’t detect a lot of aroma from the leaf, except some faint peony blossoms.

The steep leaf scent is honey and fruit. The liquor is honey/caramel in color.

To me, if I didn’t know this was a Taiwanese oolong, I would have believed it to be a Nepalese black tea. It tastes of raisin drifting into muscat grapes. It also has a nutty, deep woods presence to it. Late in the sip I sense it opening up with floral notes. that seem again like peony blossoms. Very good.