My sample of this was mislabelled as Golden Spiral and I first put the following note under that tea, so I’m transferring it here. Note that, as this is an oolong, in this note I’ve brewed at the wrong temperature:
This is from a small, free sample.
First of all, I have to say that this doesn’t look much like its picture. The strands are rather straighter and uniformly dark in colour – they’re quite big, coarse strands.
The instructions say two to four minutes so I brewed a cup for three minutes, boiling water, with a heaped teaspoon.
It made a clear, light to medium intensity, orange-brown brew, looking yellow-brown round the miniscus.
There was a quite strong aroma. It reminded me of green vegetation on a warm, damp day with a touch of freshly-turned soil, or, perhaps, the racks of vegetables in the supermarket – cabbages and various greens mingled with the smell of soil from the potatoes and so forth. It’s one of the strongest-smelling brews I’ve had for quite a while.
In the mouth it was a little bit of a surprise. The notes of the aroma are there, but mixed with a definite note of chocolate or cocoa. So it’s a combination of basic tea, earthiness, green vegetation and cocoa. It’s actually quite complex as I’m detecting elusive little hints, underneath. There’s a very, very faint bite, possibly that ‘smell of nettles’ note, or, perhaps, some herb, like thyme or rosemary. Again, I’m not sure if there was the tiniest hint of orange – vanishingly small, if it’s there.
This is an excellent mug of tea.
I tried a second infusion, though the website doesn’t mention multiple infusions – boiling water and three minutes again.
This was noticeably less intense in colour – a clear yellow-orange.
In the nose the green vegetation was less noticeable – the aroma was still unusually strong, but more earthy.
The flavour was much the same overall, though slightly ‘thinner’; but I couldn’t detect those tiny hints of orange and herbs.
This was quite a good cup of tea, but not as good as the first.
On the whole, I think I’d call this an excellent tea and I’m going to seriously consider buying some next time I put in an order to them.
