Ooooooh it’s been a long time since I had any of this!
It seems a good choice for today. Something refreshing and pick-me-up-y. It’s coming in on a day where I’ve been drinking a good tea at work and been unable to get anything really good out of it, and I’ll tell you why because it has to do with why I’m having lemon oolong now.
My boss made tea for us today and asked me to guess which one it was. When faced with this challenge, what do you think my problem was?
a) tasting it the first time when it was still so hot you can’t taste anything.
b) having it out of a travel mug that held pu-erh the same morning.
c) having it out of a travel mug that is rather due for a cleaning.
d) all of the above.
If you guessed d, have a virtual cookie. Of course me having all these excuses just made her laugh at me. Oh well. She had made me a chingwo and I think I asked her three times if she was sure it wasn’t something fruity.
The rest of the day it just tasted wrong because my brain kept insisted on it having something fruity in it. I was that certain before I gave her my first guess. No fruit, though. It just goes to show how difficult blind tasting actually is. When we drink tea here we can relatively easily tell the different types and regions apart because we know what we’re having and what we can expect from that area. It all gets a lot more difficult when we’re forced to analyse the aroma and flavour all the way from the bottom up to figure out what we’re having. Even when it’s something relatively well known.
And THAT is why I’m having the lemon oolong now. This one is obvious. You can’t sneak this one around anybody, not even in a pu-erh tainted dirty travel mug at well above boiling.
It’s fruity lemony and fresh, with deep green vegetative notes of the oolong. Oolong with lemon rather than lemon on oolong. Nicely spring-y, this one. Now that I have my Standard Panel figured out, maybe the next project should be my perfect seasonal teas? I nominate lemon oolong for spring tea.
