This was another of the must try asap teas that I just got because I am absolutely nuts for passion fruit, and again combining that with oolong was something I had to try. The smell of the dry tea is astoundingly identical to a fresh passion fruit. Not passion fruit juice or any other passion fruit flavored thing I have ever encountered, but the smell of fresh, ripe passion fruit when you crack it open and slurp out the insides. I am transported to Tanzania, where I ate dozens of passion fruit from the market. I haven’t smelled that aroma in years because it’s so hard to find fresh passion fruit where I live. Not to mention it probably wouldn’t compare to eating it fresh where its grown. How do they do that?? There’s just a richness, a depth, a leafy complexity that really comes from the rind of the fruit more than the pulp. Just wow.
I steeped this one for two minutes based on my experience with the lychee oolong. The liquor is a medium yellow and has that buttery oolong aroma overlain with the same juicy passion fruit aroma I described above. The flavor is wonderful, really amazing. I like passion fruit juice/nectar a lot, but it’s not like eating the actual fruit. This tea IS like eating the actual fruit. And maybe then drinking a nice cup of green, buttery, floral oolong. But really, the oolong melds so well with the passion fruit flavor that it’s tricking my brain into believing that it is part of the passion fruit flavor. That’s really the only way I can describe it because it is so that one singular experience that it’s not a combination of flavors anymore. Totally amazing. So glad I found this tea company!
