Lavender Basics

It’s my birthday so I figured that called for a special tea, so I brewed up the last of my Lavender Basics oolong. Parting is such sweet sorrow and all that. I’m still on a quest to find a suitable replacement for this one, since the company is out of business.

My last cup of the Lavender Basics Russian Caravan and I’ll forever be kicking myself for not having bought more while I had the chance. * mourns *

This tea has just the right amount of smoke and its tannin level is low enough that it can be drunk with or without milk, but at the same time it makes its presence felt. Farewell good tea, I’ll miss you.

Muddy looking. Smells more mellow or flat than more gunpowders I have tried…

It’s not awful. Actually…it’s pretty tame. Tastes more like a usual green tea and not a gunpowder.

Not really sure how to rate this one…because it’s not yucky but it’s not what I would call a green tea. I was thinking about rating it on taste but that wouldn’t be the gunpowder rating…so…I might just stay neutral on it.

Again not a bad taste…mellow

but not necessarily a gunpowder taste or feel in my book either. If you are looking for a true gunpowder this isn’t it. If you want to drink a cup to drink a cup…it’s not bad.

After I resteeped these leaves I found that the flavour was significantly sweeter (particularly as the brew cooled) and that simultaneously the bake-y (ha!) flavour was somewhat diminished.

I recently got the bad news that the woman who owns Lavender Basics has had to close down her store. It’s terribly disapointing news because I love several of her teas and in the case of this tea I haven’t yet found a Formosa Oolong that matches up with this one in terms of quality or taste.

It’s baked without tasting burnt and it has a very faint trace of the bark-like flavour of Adagio’s Grapefuit Oolong (sans the grapefruit, obviously). It also gives off gently-wafting fruity notes, particularly as it cools. It’s a very full-bodied, complex tea that’s quite unique and a joy to drink.

I instinctively want to save this tea and use it as sparingly as possible, but I know that doesn’t really work with the limited shelf-life tea has. Sigh.

Apparently I was gripped in a fit of insanity this morning because I decided to re-steep the leaves from the last cup. The tea was even muddier than before (I was hoping it would be less) and the flavour still unimpressive. Bleh.

Ewww, steeping this with a strainer instead of a teaball means that there’s a thick layer of muddy-looking ‘debris’ at the bottom of my mug.

I tried steeping it for 3 min and it came out rather weak-tasting. I give up, this tea just isn’t working for me. Hmph.

No notes yet.

Steeped it in boiling water (3.5 min) instead of just steaming and it brought out a sort of toasty quality to it – I’m not sure how to describe it.

No notes yet.

No notes yet.

No notes yet.

No notes yet.

Still tastes good. I steeped it twice, although it was considerably weaker on the second steeping.

The tea it makes is pretty dark for a green tea, it tasted kinda grassy with a bit of astringent bitterness at the beginning. I’m not sure if the latter is because I steeped it too long (4 min) or if the water I used was too hot. This is another one I want to play around with before I can say if I like it or not, but as of right now I’m not really feeling the love.

The Lapsang Souchong mixed in gives it a hint of smokiness in its scent and taste but it’s not so overwhelming that the smoke is all you get. It tasted very smooth and it went very well with a bit of skim milk.

I tried it with boiling water this time instead of just steaming water and it brings out the ‘toasty’ notes in the tea’s description.

The first oolong tea I’ve tasted, it’s from a nice tea-and-herb shop in the (very) small town of Creston, B.C. The tea is slightly fruity and it tastes like a cross between black and green tea without the harshness of either one. Definitely a get-again.