So I kind of sort of broke my no tea buying rule this year… but not really! This company offered a free sample of this tea if you paid $1 shipping, so how could I resist? I mean, I didn’t buy tea, I bought shipping! Watch me rationalize. Anyway, the sample was a whole ounce, so it was a really good deal anyway. The dried tea has a nice floral, fresh aroma to it, and when steeped that turns into a very floral, very buttery scent. The first thing I thought when I took the steeping basket out of my mug was “woah, those are some huge leaves!” There are some small leaves, some pieces of large leaves, and some stems in the mix.
The flavor is both strongly floral and strongly vegetal… they just play off each other so that they both get time to shine. It is a bit buttery but overall the tea is a little astringent in that way that green oolongs sometimes are. No sweetness to it, really, but it is a rather nice cup.
As a side note, this company has a lot of interesting oolongs but they only sell 5oz or more on most teas, and that is more than I want to buy untried. They have some flavored oolongs I’d like to try too, but those are only sold in 10.5oz packs! Oh well.
