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Oriental Beauty from Mandala Tea

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77/100

Oriental Beauty

Oolong Tea by Mandala Tea

Oriental Beauty is a twisted leaf oolong from Taiwan with multi-hued leaves reminiscent of autumn foliage. It has a very smooth and sweet flavor, virtually no astringency, and beautiful amber colored liquor. This is a more fully oxidized oolong tea inching closer to the black tea family. You can imagine that this would bring about a more robust flavor compared with those oolongs that are less oxidized and greener in color.

Basic Brewing Instructions:

Oolong tea should be given a 10-15 second rinse with the same temperature water as used for brewing.
195˚ F water temperature.
Use 1 Tablespoon per 8oz. of filtered water
Recommended first steeping of 30 seconds. Add 30 seconds for each subsequent infusion up to 3 minutes.
Tea brewing is meant to be a joyful exploration. There are no hard and fast rules. Experiment with the quantity of tea that you use, and steeping times. Enjoy discovering what your preferences are. They may change day to day.
See Tea Brewing 101 for further instructions.
The Gongfu Cha Method is our prefered style of brewing oolong teas.

1 Tasting Note

Dinosara
78

Sipdown, 193. Thanks to Azzrian for this sample!

I decided to use the whole sample in one go, and then realized that I would have a pretty similar water:tea ratio as in their steeping instructions. So I then I thought, why not. I did a 10 second rinse, as instructed, and then meant to do a 30 second steep, but it turned into a minute. Ah well. The tea is definitely not oversteeped. It smells incredibly fruity, like apricots or plums.

Well color me surprised. I have tried a smattering of oriental beauty teas over the years and have never been all that in love with them. Dark oolongs just don’t do it for me so much. But this! This one I am most definitely enjoying. Fruity, sweet, with a hint of minerals but not too much. No roasted/toasted flavor (yay), not too woody or rocky. I’m not in love enough to order more, but I will be less skeptical of oriental beauty oolongs in the future for sure.

PS: I really wish there was a search-your-own-tasting notes function. I would love to search for oriental beauty and see my previous notes, since there are probably some in there that I don’t even remember. 1010 is a lot of tasting notes!