Another June tea of the month on the classic plan.
It smells terrific in the bag. A sort of nutty, gingery, cinnamony mix. It looks like a typical Teavana mixture with stuff other than tea in it. Big chunky trail mix-like pieces. Not quite as big as some of the other Teavana fruit mixtures that featured almost entire slices of citrus, but chunky nevertheless.
The tea is yellow in color with some orange in it as well. Darkish yellow, and though not entirely opaque, it isn’t clear either. There are little rooibos kitties down at the bottom of the glass. The aroma is fruitier than the dry mix. I can smell the apple (second ingredient) and some other fruit that smells like citrus ( oddly, as there is no citrus listed in the ingredients). I can also detect a faint cinnamon smell.
The taste is, in fact, much better than the aroma at least at first. Interestingly, it’s a third thing altogether. It doesn’t have a lot in common with either the dry aroma or the steeped one. Here I really taste the toasted nutty flavor I was expecting from the name (since oolongs often have a toasted nutty flavor, it seemed a natural fit for this type of flavoring). It’s got a sweetness to it, and some gingery spiciness as well. There’s a strange orangey note that has no real explanation. It seems to be tied to the cinnamon, somehow. Maybe it’s a result of the combination of the various fruit pieces. I can’t say I taste pineapple or papaya.
It’s true, as someone else said, that the initial sips are the best. After the initial nuttiness and toasty flavor, the cinnamon and apple/weird orange note take over. It’s not bad, it’s just not as good as the first sips, and starts to seem more like a Constant Comment echo.
Second steep, three minutes. Pretty much all the flavoring agents were washed away in the first steep it seems, except for a slight apply/cinnamony flavor. Usually at this point at least I’d get an oolong flavor, but unfortunately, the apple/cinnamon flavor is so distracting I can’t even tell whether the tea is bringing anything to the party.
I should disclose that I put about twice as much of the mix in as would ordinarily be recommended, as I find that otherwise the size of the pieces in these mixtures makes for a weak steep.
Not the worst flavored oolong by any stretch, but doesn’t live up to the promise of its name.
