This is another of my free samples from Tea Licious. The rose part intrigued me, but also listed lemongrass and ginger, a combo I like, and I was very curious. The dry leaf smells like lemongrass and ginger, unsurprisingly; the rose is fairly wiped out. The oolong leaves are very green and crumpled up almost into little balls; I don’t have any rose buds in my sample, but there are definitely petals.
Brewed, the aroma is still very lemongrass/ginger. That carries through to the taste, which is primarily lemony but a bit gingery as well. It’s not peppery gingery, but the lemongrass and ginger meld together to form a very tasty combo. I’d wager that in a competition like this, the usually more delicate rose loses, as it seems to here. The oolong base is very pleasant; a tea with lemongrass and ginger can easily get too ‘sharp’, but the oolong adds a smoothness, almost a thickness to the tea. I guess this is the ‘breadiness’ that people describe with some oolongs. I really feel like this tea is misnamed; call it a Lemongrass Ginger Oolong, and you have it right on the money. It’s delicious, and I could definitely see it filling the lemon/ginger gap in my cupboard right now.
