Formosa Tung Ting Jade Oolong (618)

Yay, oolong!
I have conferred with myself and voted oolong to be one of my favorite teas from now on. Oh, I always liked oolong but today I decided to love them.

And how can I not? You get small puny tiny leaves and after steeping GREAT & HUGE leafs takes over your little mug. The color of the tea is yellow – such a yummy color.
The tea smells of some kind of berry (I know, strange…) flowers and veggies.

First sip: CARDEMOM.
Yup. It’s cardemom flavor, I am sure of it. I wonder if I should try to steep it at a lower temp. to get the flavors the other peeps are tasting?

Still Digging into the Package Doulton send me.
Cheers ;)

The first impression of the brewed tea is a strong sense that I am wearing spinach perfume. I’m not put off. There’s a company that makes odd perfumes: Demeter Fragrances: http://www.demeterfragrance.com/
They are novelty odors and don’t have much staying power. I consult their web site to see if they have spinach perfume. No, but if you are interested in wafting of celery, dregs, earthworm, tarnish, vinyl, or waffles, that’s the perfume company for you.

The tea is still hot and tastes like really rich spinach water. As it cools, however, more flavors are starting to emerge. It’s as if someone unleashed some fruit and flowers into the spinach brew. And yes, it’s like butter.

Does anyone remember “Coffee Talk with Linda Richman” on SNL? She thought that Barbra Streisand was just like “buttah” and so is this tea. It’s a deep golden brew of buttery spinach with a touch of flower and little slice on honeydew on the side.

I’m liking this and looking forward to the second steep. I hope that nobody is put off by my description of “spinach” tea because I really do think that the taste has got something of ineffable sublimity to it and I have not found the words to describe it adequately.

SECOND STEEPING: What a difference! I steeped this for 2 mins and 30 seconds and should have left it at 2 minutes. It’s slightly oversteeped. The spinach aroma and taste have disappeared almost entirely—just fleeting little returns are present. Aside from the slight overbrewing (a lesson to learn: green teas are more sensitive than the ever vigilant infant who suspects his or her parents have fallen asleep and hence must shout inconsolably) this is a very light floral experience. Orchid? I cannot quite pin it down. I don’t recognize it from any of my perfumes. It’s subtle but excellent.

THIRD STEEPING: The cost of this tea has become eminently reasonable when I consider that I can get three very good cups from it. The third steeping was less rich and deep and tasted more like a generic vegetal green tea that was somehow buttered. I also added a tiny bit of brown sugar and that was nice—the natural sweetness of the tea does not require any additions, but I wanted to experiment. It still felt like a full brew but less distinctively unique. Third cup remains most certainly satisfying and rich; did not have any hint of being “water down” in any way.

This oolong is very green. In a good way.
The mouthfeel is creamy, and it’s got a nice floral after-taste.

The only thing I don’t like too much about this tea is that it doesn’t smell as luscious as other oolong teas.

Otherwise, good tea!

Bright and sweet with a little bit of moss, this tea bears a very delicious springtime quality. Steeped five times with increasing toastiness.

Very, very easy to drink (while frolicking in the forest with my cats).

OK. I first encountered Tung Ting from Peets Coffee & Tea out in Berkeley California. They have a changing series of teas that they call “Rare Teas”. I bought a 2 oz. tin of Tung Ting and fell in love with it. Since I moved from Berkeley in 2003 Peets has stopped carrying it and I used up the last of my supply. So for any years I’ve been looking for some more Tung Ting. This summer I did a search on the internet and found some Tung Ting and ordered 2 2oz. bags of it.

It is just as I remember it. To do it justice you should have a small purple clay pot and a small purple clay cup. About a half a teaspoon to a 10-12 oz. pot. Water should be allowed to sit a few minutes after boiling. I steep for 2 to 3 minutes before I pour a small amount. As I consume that I pour more a minute or so apart enjoying the increasing flavor and scent until I consume the whole pot and do a second pour on the leaves.

Tung Ting is a green Oolong which when you add the water, the leaves which are whole open up and give off an absolutely ethereal floral scent. The liquor is a light yellow but the combination of the floral scent and the light green taste puts me in another world. The second pour on the leaves is not quite as intense, but still excellent.

One of the best Oolong’s around. It should be light, floral, honeysuckle-like.

mellow oolong, a bit floral

Had a couple of steeps of this yesterday. Very good oolong, did 2 steeps at like 2:30 and 3:00 with 195 degree water. Used 2 heaping tsp in a 14oz pot. Very floral like a good minimally oxidized Oolong with a bit of a buttery taste. The second steep was very good too, better than the Formosa Pouchong from SpecialTeas (although I may have used more leaf here).

This tea came as part of a SpecialTeas Oolong sample collection, and I’m wondering if I’ll have to learn a new vocabulary just to describe them. This has an unbelievable aroma being all grassy buttery and floral… hang on, buttery? I could spend the rest of the afternoon inhaling over a cup of this. The taste is sweet and full, yet light and, er, oolongy. I guess I like it.
The second steep was closer to what I’d expect a standard Oolong to be, so savor that first cup.