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Origin: Hawaii Island, Hawaii, USA
Flavor Profile: Because it was grown and processed in Hawaii, this oolong’s flavor profile is a singular experience. The leaves are young, artfully consistent and vibrantly colored with slightly oxidized edges. They brew into a sophisticated, delicate, pale yellow-green infusion.
The flavor of the brew is elusive and complex. It’s somewhat reminiscent of a Baochong oolong, but less fruity. It has some of the grassiness of a sencha, but it’s not brothy. It’s flinty, crisp, smooth and cooling, with mild, tropical notes of green papaya. Fleeting hints of pine, evergreen, Kahili ginger flowers (which are locally abundant) and honey add to the complexity of this enticing brew.
Tea Story: Samovar is the first tea company in the world to retail Hawaii-Grown Oolong outside of Hawaii.
Hawaii-Grown Oolong Tea is grown at 3,600 feet above sea level near the active Kilauea Volcano’s summit at the Volcano Tea Garden. Locally, this oolong is called “Mauka Oolong.” Mauka means “toward the mountain;” it is a Hawaiian adaptation of the Chinese name “high mountain tea.”
As a high-elevation tea and as a Hawaii-grown product, the Volcano Tea Garden Hawaii-Grown Oolong has an incredibly pure growing environment and a unique set of weather patterns as the basis for its terroir. The soil is fertile and acidic (precisely what tea plants need) and the water, air and soil are amongst the cleanest on Earth.
Volcano Tea Garden started quite unexpectedly after owner Mike Riley visited his wife, Carol, at the USDA Pacific Basin Agriculture Research Center in Hilo, Hawaii, where she worked. Carol worked under Dr. Francis Zee, who was soon to become a major contributor to tea’s newfound presence in Hawaii agriculture.
Dr. Zee had just discovered that his predecessor at the Hilo research facility had planted a row of tea plants there many years earlier. Mike watched Dr. Zee pluck and process a batch of tea, which they drank at the end of the day. Mike was immediately hooked on the idea of Hawaii-grown tea.
Mike harvests the leaves and processes them by hand. He hand-rolls the leaves in muslin cloth and pan-fires the leaves. He repeats the process of rolling and frying about 25 times to produce a lightly oxidized, semi-balled, light-roast oolong in small batches that are under five pounds dry weight each.
Both Mike and Eva Lee of Tea Hawaii & Company belong to a collective of local tea growers that has joined together to make their teas available to companies like Samovar.
Although they both work in Hawaii’s higher elevations and Mike’s farm is only four miles away as the crow flies, Eva’s plants flush at different times from his, just as he can feel earthquakes about three minutes before she can. Eva said this is all part of the rhythm of nature that goes on in Hawaii.
Eva also processes our Hawaii-Grown Black Tea with leaves from another tea garden. She sees her role as helping growers bring their teas to fruition and customizing teas to suit Samovar’s needs. Eva said, “Jesse had so many
people request teas grown in the U.S., he got tired of saying no,” and that now, “We’re happy to be able to debut our teas with Jesse.”The amount of tea Samovar orders is limited enough that Hawaii tea growers and processors are free to continue to experiment with tea types and processing techniques. For example, some farms are producing white tea, shade-grown tea, unprocessed (“fresh leaf”) tea and other rarities.
Now is the ideal time to taste Hawaii-grown tea and provide feedback to suppliers and growers in order to shape the future of Hawaii-grown tea.
Samovarian Poetry: A journey of discovery begins.
Food Pairings: The delicate flavor of this tea is best paired with lighter fare, like fresh fruit, lemon chicken, lightly smoked whitefish or dried apricots dipped in white chocolate.
This is a really REALLY good Oolong. The flavor is truly unique. I can indeed taste the tropical notes here. It is sweet and fruity (but not overly fruity), with a nice buttery smoothness to it. I’m on my third/fourth infusion now (the third and fourth infusion combined into one cup), and the mouthfeel is lighter than it was at first. It was very silky at the start. The woodsy tones are delightful the way they mingle with the floral and fruit notes.
A lovely Oolong experience.
This is another fabulous Takgoti tea. I wanted to wait until I had a decent chunk of time on my hands to really give this tea the tasting note it deserves. This is a special tea! Not many teas are grown in America, so I feel honored to be able to taste this. I’m using my new teensy weensy Glass Oolong Teapot from Samovar for this tasting, as well as my new Lotus White Teacup from Rishi. The teapot is so cute! This is how small it is in comparison with my hand (and you can also check out the unique shape of the dry leaf): http://www.flickr.com/photos/47736372@N04/4598524179/ Upon steeping, the leaves unfurl to epic proportions: http://www.flickr.com/photos/47736372@N04/4599146076/ I rinsed the leaves first and then made my first infusion. Here is the finished first infusion in my new Rishi teacup: http://www.flickr.com/photos/47736372@N04/4599148028/
First infusion: This tea has the kind of buttery, smooth mouth feel that I associate with a white tea, such as Samovar’s Downy Sprout. The texture is like a white tea, but the taste is a strange cross between an oolong and a sweet green. It is just slightly grassy, but I also taste a tree-like note (and reading what Samovar has to say about this, I think I’m tasting the pine or evergreen) like how a Christmas tree smells. It is less buttery and more sweet as it cools down.
Second infusion: The mouth feel has become a lot lighter; it’s not nearly as buttery anymore. This infusion tastes more like an oolong instead of a green/oolong/white hybrid. After each sip, the aftertaste makes me think that I just ate a few grains of sugar.
Third infusion: The color is beginning to lighten up a hair. The taste is starting to get more sweet and flowery, and the Christmas tree taste isn’t as prominent anymore. The buttery feel is no longer existent.
Fourth infusion: Color is even lighter now. The Christmas tree taste is just barely there, but the floral taste is now the most noticeable note. It continues to get sweeter, but everything is starting to taste a little watery.
Again, I want to thank Takgoti for this experience!
Yet Another Auggy Tea…Thanks Aug-meister!
:)
This has the ever so slight aroma of veggies and a gentle smoke…not the typical smoke I usually post about – more like an incense smoke from afar…
That may be a a bit of a stretch – but – I don’t want to say it’s smoky because it’s a very different type smell, ya know!? But mostly vegetal.
The taste is very mild but relaxing there is a small hint of pine towards the back of the mouth once your sip is complete. I think the fruity description mentioned by the company is somewhat noticeable in the aftermath…or if you were to “soodle” or “suddle” your tea! (Oh my! Who would do such a thing!? – ME…lol)
I’m getting really tired of this white… stuff falling from the sky. I don’t do winter. The weather outside, however, is the epitome of winter. I am not pleased.
To protest, I’m having this tea. I’ll admit, I wanted to try this tea just because it was grown in Hawaii. Not only am I a sucker for anything orange, I’m a sucker for Hawaii. I thought it’d probably be a little roastier than what I’d prefer based on a quick glance at the description, but eh. It was grown in Hawaii so I’ll try it anyway just to say I have. And then I smelled the dry leaf.
Ooooh. Ooooh, nice. I have recently come to the realization that pouchongs / baozhongs are probably my favorite type of tea. And that’s what this smells like. But… bolder. Darker. More… Hawaiian. I have a feeling I will like this one.
Smelling it while it is brewing, it continues to smell richer and darker. Pouring it into the cup, I get the fresh, green smell of pouchong overlaid with something dark and warm, exotic and almost spicy. The tea color is a clear, light, yellow-green that really is quite lovely.
Oh this is good. Much darker tasting than an actual pouchong. Warm and sweet, it seems to have an almost candied ginger hint in the tail and there’s a fresh taste left in my mouth after I swallow.
Ugh, I put a lotion sampler on and it smells like chicken sausage and it’s interfering with my tea! I keep trying to delve deeper and end up ‘finding’ the chicken sausage! AUGH! I’ve washed the lotion off (or tried to) but now I just smell like soapy chicken sausage.
Chicken sausage being excluded for the moment, this tea reminds me of Tao of Tea’s Neela. Which is weird because I didn’t like Neela at all but I like this. The Neela tasted a bit raw and rough. This has a similar taste but tweaked just enough where it comes across as fresh and clean. There is a similar smoothness and lightness of flavor but it works in this tea because of the lovely little things going on under that thin, clear surface. Ginger and honey and some darker fruity something or other (and chicken sausage… sigh).
I will admit, I’m drinking this pretty slowly because I can’t just swallow it. I have to slowly move it around in my mouth, taste it fully. There’s just so much going on but at the same time, the notes are delicate. As it cools, the base taste of the tea reminds me more and more of a pouchong but more flavors seem to pop up. This is really lovely and I’d like it even if it weren’t Hawaiian.
I reserve the right to increase this rating when I no longer smell like chicken sausage.
ETA: The second steep is much less chicken sausage and the flavor that was hinting around before, coming out in a few different way, has finally moved to the forefront. When we were in Maui, there were all these thick, almost rubbery, pine cone looking, colorful flowers all over the place. I want to say they were called soap plants or shampoo blossoms or something like that because of the nectar the oozed out when they were squeezed. Anyway, that is the flavor I’m getting.
Two of my good friends are shacking up together. It’s a weird feeling, but I’m happy for them [truly]. One of them, I’ve known since kindergarten. The other I’ve known for a few years now.
About a year ago, when my kindergarten BFF was coming to visit from Fargo, ND where she currently resides, a light went off in my head. She was feeling a little bummed about being single, and I had this friend who was single, and I had this gut feeling that some magic would happen if I introduced them.
My BFF is back in town this week for a couple of days. Tomorrow, she’s taking my friend to Penn State with her family to go to the football game and then they are embarking on the 20 hour drive to the land of ice and snow. [It has already snowed in Fargo.]
They’re both sports freaks [she works in sports journalism and he’s…well, he’s a guy] so last night we all went to the World Cup Qualifier game between the U.S. and Costa Rica. [The U.S. had already qualified, but that didn’t keep 20-odd thousand people from attending]. Me, I’m not that much of a sports fan, but soccer [football, futbal, whatever] is one of the ones I can stand. And soccer players are hot. Not to mention soccer fans, as a general rule, are cuter than fans of other sports in my limited experience. Plus, I don’t get to see her often and he’s leaving shortly, so…you know.
It was cold and raining, and we were playing pretty badly during the first half of the game, so spirits were down. I had on three layers, and then BOTH of my friends gave me their jackets because I was dancing around trying to keep warm. All I could think about was how much I wanted a hot cup of tea. And how the guy a couple rows ahead of us looked freakishly like Jon Gosselin. [I wish I’d snapped a picture. I couldn’t stop staring, the resemblance was so striking.]
Luckily, it stopped raining, and the second half of the game picked up. We tied it up at the VERY end and the stadium erupted. It was all slightly exhilarating, but I still wanted tea.
We ended up picking up some Korean BBQ on the way back, sitting in front of the fireplace in my friend’s parents’ kitchen, and drinking hot chocolate. All in all, it was a good night and a nice way to remember one of the last nights my buddy’s gonna be in Virginia.
The first thing I did when I went home was to make a cup of tea, though. I was tired, exhausted even [too exhausted to log this last night], and in the mood for something specific while I mentally unpacked the day.
I’ve had this tea for a while, but I like to save it when I want something subtle and I know I’m not really going to be doing anything else. It’s different from most other oolongs I’ve had because the leaves are loosely twisted instead of tightly furled. Opening the tin, I smell raisins mixed with dried autumn leaves.
The flavors of the tea are a bit different from oolong’s I’ve had as well. They are definitely complex, but delicate. You want to make sure of two things when drinking this tea: one, that you’ll have time to appreciate it, and two that it’s cool enough to let it sit in your mouth a bit because if you gulp it down you’ll miss all the nuances.
It’s not a heavy tea, by any means, but it’s got a thickness to it. The flavors are what I consider to be darker ones. There are kind of a sweet, grassy, vegetal tones, and a taste that’s almost woodsy. At times I taste honey, among other things that I can’t place.
It’s a tea for thinking, and one that I enjoy at the end of the day – be they good, bad, happy, sad, or all of the above.
I have been waiting for this tea for some time but I didn’t even realize it.
But first: I had an experience that wasn’t as great as I’d hoped with a Samovar order. I emailed about it and they were totally awesome! I love the company even more now and plan to order a lot more tea from them. Well done, Samovar.
Back to the tea: it’s great! I’ve done a few infusions and it went from being a fairly standard oolong to being nearly sweet. I need to do a more focused study of it, with much more attention to temperature, time, and number of steeps, but even without that I can say with confidence that this is my favorite oolong.
That, and the leaves are crazy! They’re not curled up the way many oolongs are and they’re HUGE!
I’m so excited that I get to try this Hawaiian tea! Thanks so much to takgoti for sending it to me. I’ve read about it in books and online and daydreamed about lazy afternoons spent drinking Hawaiian teas, but had no idea where to find it. Once she sent it to me I’ve looked and looked at it and longed to try it. But there was never a moment when I was healthy enough to taste it properly, had time to dedicate to it, was not running to a meeting, had a thermometer, and hadn’t had my taste buds corrupted by other teas previously. But today is the day!
The leaves are beautiful, big, full leaves wrinkled into variegated colors of green, dark green, and brown.The tea itself brews into a golden liquid that smells like flowers along with some sort of dark flower. Here in Memphis there are flowers that scent the air at night. This tea’s fragrance is reminiscent of walking through a Memphis summer in the moist flower-fragranced night. There is a slight undernote of resin as well.
The taste is light and flowered as well with a sweetness that doesn’t cloy. This is a really nice oolong with none of the strange boiled vegetable taste that some oolongs have. There is a very slight grassiness, a brief flirt with the taste of green tea, but not strong enough or lasting enough to be anything other than a tease. Mostly I taste flowers and a whisper of honey. It is splendid!
This one is blowing my mind. It is probably one of the best tasting oolongs I have every had. Seriously.
It has the subtle flavor that I love about oolongs. But instead of being crisp, it’s got a creaminess to it, which totally contradicts the pale clear liquid. There is a sight fruity note in it, but very mild. It’s not a “fruity” tea at all. Other sips, I can taste a “green” note, which must be the pine. Sweetness, a little bit of a rawness character to it, mild in flavor and color. Just all around goodness. I could drink this all day and just think about each cup. I think this one will have to be for special “I have nothing on my calendar” days!
And let me tell you, the leaves are HUGE. Even dried. Opening the bag and peering in, it looked like they put the whole plant in there (except for the twiggy parts). But they are a beautiful green color, like they were dried not that long ago.
Fantastic. Heaven in my cup. I’m sure I said that before, but this one is really amazing.
The product description is surprisingly accurate on the taste-notes. For me, I was also getting a sense of what can be best described as “fresh”, with slight notes of vegetal, and an interesting titillation on the tip of my tongue, a sensation similar to something spicy (but not being actually spicy). Due to its rather mellow nature, I had to steep longer than some oolongs. In this case, 3mins at just over Green/White Tea-temps. And for each consecutive steep, added another 30 seconds. By the third steep, it takes on a more apricot flavour. I’ve managed to take it to 5 steeps without issue, but found the first steep to be the most interesting. As good as this tea is, the cost makes it difficult to justify, at least for an “every day” tea. Probably better suited for special occasions, or something to try now and then to break up your regular tea regimen.
Excellent tea. High quality, gorgeous leaves. Delicate, and sweet. Tastes fruity and slightly grassy. Mouth feel of a white but clear fruit flavors. Delicious over and over again. Steep as many times as possible.
Amazing! That is all I can say. The best tea!
The best tea I have ever had. I had it about a year ago at Samovar and I still think about it today. The tea is grown next to a pineapple field and you can actually taste the pineapple in the tea! Subtle and tasty. Can’t wait until they have more.
My current favorite oolong. It is expensive, but it’s such a gorgeous tea. Beautiful to drink, gorgeous full leaves, and you can re-steep this one over and over again.
On my last online tea shopping trip at Samovar, they were featuring a couple of teas from Hawaii and this one sounded like it was right up my ally. I took a chance and glad I did!
I love supporting anything from the US! This is a for real Oolong. You lose nothing by leaving Tiawan with this Oolong. Nice work, would buy again.
