Love sent out to Emilie for sending me this tea for a tea trade!
OBSERVATIONS: Why is there pictures of cantaloupe in the background of this tea on Teavana’s page? Theres no cantaloupe in this. At least I think it’s cantaloupe (or maybe over exposed watermelon?), seems too light for papaya and it would be easy to identify with papaya + seeds.
DRY: Fruity. I’m trying so hard to smell out some candy papaya but not smelling it. Darn. Very tight and chunky tea. The oolong is in rolled ball form and lots of chunks of fruit and rosebuds.
STEEPED: Light cinnamony and sweet smelling. This tea would be impressive to steep into a glass travel mug with all the colourful chunks, leaves opening and rose bits. Steeps up to a pale yellow. I was crazy and dug into the steeped leftovers and ate chunks of apple and pineapple, yum!
TASTE: There’s a lot going on here. Warm cinnamon (not spicy), bit of citrus, floral, slight bitterness from the oolong, slight papaya essence, sweetness. Kinda tropical. Burpy pineapple aftertaste.
WHO’D LIKE THIS TEA: Oolong drinkers or peeps who like complex flavors.
COMMENTS: Too much going on in this tea! I do like lots of fun flavors going on but I think there’s something throwing it off. I blame the cinnamon or maybe the floral. Take one of those out and this might be pretty nice tea.
That or maybe this cup just had way too much cinnamon. Teavana says “subtle and sweet cinnamon”. This was not subtle cinnamon. I was hoping for a more stronger fruit taste.
Overall, okay. Maybe I’ll have better cups from this batch – sometimes I find big chunky tea gives you various results. I probably won’t buy any myself once I polish this tea off.
