Maple Pecan Oolong

Mmm…..delicious! This tea is so calming and relaxing. Pecan notes are prevalent with that buttery, smooth, sweet maple. The oolong base was a wise choice for this tea.
Resteep at 4.5 minutes was still good, however, it did lose a lot of sweetness.

I have lots of samples from various Steepsters I should be tasting, but I was really in the mood for this one this afternoon. It is really hitting the spot! It is rainy and a little chilly here, and this is just perfect! :)

Makes me want to make some maple pecan scones tonight, too…heh.

I got this as a sample with my recent order and I have been dying to try it. The leaves have a very strong maple fragrance. The tea itself is more nutty than anything. I had high hopes for maple, but it’s still a great tea. Sweet and light!

This is one that I asked specifically for when swapping with Scheherazade and I’m ever so pleased that she shared some with me. I’ve been very excited about this one. I tend to like nutty flavoured teas it seems. I had that hazelnut brittle that grew on me, and presently the almond flavoured tea that I have is very nice too. This isn’t something that I’ve really been conscious about before but nuts appear to attract me. This is rather strange, really, because I don’t much like eating nuts on their own. If they’re in food or cakes or something, I like them just fine. It’s a texture thing. A nut on its own feels to me like chewing on wood. And I never ever seem to be able to quite finish chewing. I have this same experience with raw carrot as well if it isn’t cut into smaller pieces.

And of course the maple did as well due to my well-known gravitation towards things that smell remotely like caramel.

(I think we can conclude here that, basically, I like sweeties.)

It smells very lovely of maple and also a good deal of nuts. It reminds me of hard caramel sweeties or brittle. Melted sugar. I’m a little concerned that it might be sickeningly sweet, but I believe the nuts might temper that.

Actually the very first flavour I get when sipping is that of the base oolong! It’s wood-y and roasted just how I prefer them. Following that is an even more wood-y flavour of nuts and then finally the maple on the aftertaste, mostly. I was expecting this to be totally the other way around. What a peculiar thing.

I thought I would enjoy it, and by being completely backwards it has actually managed to be even more enjoyable. What a lovely tea!

I’m just back from World Tea East so you’ll be seeing quite a few tea reviews from that here and on the blog. But I also had the pleasure of meeting Stacy, owner of Butiki Teas there. She was even a sweetheart and brought me some samples. This one caught my eye when I openend her bag this afternoon. I love anything that has maple flavor to it and I really like oolongs. So I was hoping this would be as good as it sounded.

The dry leaf smells very much of maple and I loved the large pieces of pecan too. Yes I ate a piece too, yum! I followed the directions Stacy gave me which listed the temp for the water to be 170…I’ve always done mine higher, but I went with her suggestions. I waited the time suggested (4 minutes), removed my steeping basket, gave it a small hit of vanilla sugar, a stir and a first sip.

Let me back up a moment. The smell of the steeped leaves brings out a little bit of a citrus flavor that does play nice with the other flavors (to my surprise). Now to the first sip…wow! She mentioned it would taste a little like pecan pie, I’m not a fan of that, but if it tasted like this I could turn into one. Slightly sweet, with the citrus, plus the slightly maybe woodsy flavor of the oolong (odd maybe but that’s what I’m getting) and I am loving it.

I wish I was getting more from the pecans, but that is really my only complaint here.

Thank you very much for the sample!!

There’s a very special place in my heart for Butiki’s oolongs. Definitely my favourite oolongs in general. This one? Heavenly. There’s not much else for me to say about it.

Sipdown on this one!
A little sad to see this go, but I have an order on the way from Butiki with a ton of new teas to try so I’m not too crushed! =)
Nice pecan-y flavors. Subtle, but delicious maple notes. See previous tasting notes for more in depth coverage of this tea.

This is seriously one of the most amazing things I’ve ever put in my mouth. And I’ve had some great things in my mouth before. But holy damn, this is really good tea.

This is on my reorder list, and I will be replenishing my supply soon. Until then, I will continue to ration this one, drinking it only when I need it. Like today, sigh.

What, I never tried this tea? It got buried in my tin of teas I haven’t tried yet. /cry

DRY: Smells like mapley sweet and nutty. Lots of big hunks of nuts in this tea! Yum!

STEEPED: deep gold coloured tea with a maple sweet scent. Annoyingly my kettle doesn’t do 170f. It does 160f or 175f, so I did 175.

TASTE: Nutty and silky with a maple hint weaving through! I can pick out the pecan flavor. Very nice silky finish to this tea. The oolong base is great with this tea! The pecan and maple here is natural tasting, not artificial.

Sweetened, I got more pecan nuttyness and the maple comes out stronger. I let my cup get cold while watching BJJ videos and the tea was still very good. Both unsweetened and sweetened cups were good!

COMMENTS: Really delicious fall tea! I love the nuttyness of this tea – no funky or artificial tastes too! I quite like the base of this tea as well, I’m tempted to try Nilgiri Frost Oolong for my next order.

The flavors are subtle but definitely present. Not in-your-face but the end note is all maple. Unfortunately getting to that point is a fair bit of oolong which more and more I realize I don’t really like. I can see how sugar could really make the flavors pop but as I am not in the practice of adding anything to my tea, I am left with a tea that I wish was just a tad bit sweeter and slightly bolder with the flavoring. Honestly I think it is my own personal preferences because I 100% can tell why this is so popular. However, with so many teas that I absolutely love I am finding it harder and harder to spend time drinking teas that are just alright/not for me. Nonetheless, thank you OMGsrsly for this sample. I got a bag in the BF sale as well and I think that might end up in my stash sale.