I’m loving the sound of flavoured Pu Erh at the moment so I dove into my Nothing But Tea Pu Erh sampler box and pulled out this orange Pu Erh. That sounds delicious! I have had a different brand of tangerine Pu Erh before and that was very tasty and I imagine this would be similar.
As I snipped my way into the packaging I was greeted with a super strong orange fragrance that was natural with sweet and waxy highlights. It smells like fresh orange, as though one had been cut in half and I have taken a huge sniff. Luckily I love orange and this is certainly not for the faint hearted. :)
Appearance wise this looks like normal loose leaf Pu Erh, small and thinly rolled dark brown leaves in various squiggly shapes. Other than the smell I would not be able to tell any different.
Brewed in my gongfu with boiling water for 2 minutes to give me a lovely large glass full. I’m hoping it’s potent enough for a second cheeky steep (I used two tea spoons of leaves).
The tea soup is browny red in colour (standard ripe Pu Erh coloured) but it carries the same strong orange fragrance but with a more noticeable Pu Erh astringency and earthiness. Yummy.
The flavour is not as strong as the smell but the orange is strong enough to be as expected. It does taste very natural and the mixture of sweet and sour citrus is very pleasing, it matches this ripe Pu Erh perfectly. It tastes like an orange tree: earthy, fruity, natural, sweet, sour, woody, fresh.
It’s a very nice tea and the balance is perfect. I bet this would be a great summer drink.
Ha – I am doing flavored pu-erh today too. :)