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For a while, I thought that oolongs weren’t [please pardon the pun] my cup of tea. I’d pretty much written them off in my mind as dirty spinach-y cousins of my tea repertoire who did unspeakable things with sheep and so no one talks about them.

I’m not sure why this is. It might be because the first steep of the oolongs I’ve tried tend to be pretty vegetal and I stopped paying attention after that. I probably also wasn’t steeping them in hot enough water or something equally silly, which speaks to how well I read directions sometimes.

Please, do not let what happened to me happened to you. Unless what happens to you is what ENDED up happening to me, because I drank this tea for an entire week.

An entire week. ALL WEEK LONG I DRANK THIS TEA. I woke up, started the day with a little Ryokucha or a matcha shake to prod my brain into waking up, and then I would drink this tea and do physics. Or drink this tea and do calculus. Or drink this tea and program. I would drink it in a box, and I would drink it with a fox. I would drink it in a house, and I would drink it with a mouse. I would drink it here and there and I WOULD DRINK IT EVERYWHERE. I drank this tea until I ran out of it yesterday, though tragically I just put an order through with Samovar so it’ll have to wait until next time.

In the same way that I was shocked when I tried Ryokucha for the first time, I was floored with how different this tea tasted from how I thought tea could ever taste. And my god, people, it EVOLVES [oh dear Zeus, I just had a flashback to my Pokemon playing days]. That isn’t just some shit they spin for the description to get you to buy the stuff. The taste shifts and matures and does all sorts of wonderful things between steeps so that you’re getting new flavors in every cup. And that little bit of magic is why this tea would last me for an entire afternoon, sometimes longer.

Before I get back to the taste, let me tell you first that I’ve heard/seen the phrase “mouth-feel” thrown around a few times as I get acclimated into the tea world, and I always snickered a bit. I mean, it’s water, right? I didn’t fully understand what they were referring to until I really gave this tea a chance. It DOES have texture. It’s…kind of silky, if that makes sense. It feels rich, almost luxurious. Perhaps you are accustomed to paying attention to this aspect of tea, but for someone who’s new to it…I guess you could say I’ve had a tea-piphany.

Samovar’s description of Four Seasons completely nails what is going on in this tea. I don’t always “get” the full array of what I could be experiencing when it comes to tea, but I was pleased to find myself able to pick out flavors from this one. The buttery component of it, especially, was something that surprised me. I bet this would taste sinfully good with a croissant.

In fact, and excuse me while I expose a little MORE geekiosity on you here, this tea is just about exactly what I thought butter beer would taste like.

Yes, I am referring to Harry Potter.