Taiwan High Mountain Oolong Tea

Thanks again, Angel, for this sample!

I don’t have a handle yet on what makes a fine oolong tea. Until I do, I’ll continue to focus on taste.

When I opened the sample packet, the aroma was familiar. It took me a few seconds to identify it. And then I got it: snickerdoodles!

I steeped the twisted little dark leaves for two minutes at 212 degrees as recommended. The brewed color was a pale yellow. The smell was slightly syrupy and airy.

The flavor was light, a bit sweet, and extremely smooth. One thing I’ve noticed about all of the oolongs that I’ve tried so far is that this category seems to be devoid of the earthy and grassy flavor characteristics that I’ve grown accustomed to with black and green teas. This selection was no exception.

The flavor was not powerful but it was sweet, pleasing, and refreshing. No “tea taste” was present and not even a whisper of bitterness could be found.

This is an engaging oolong tea with a faintly sweet and pleasant aftertaste. I wouldn’t add it to your list of robust blends, but if you are looking for a light, sweet, and silky smooth brew, this one can’t be beat! Oh, and did I mention it is sweet?

This is a quite floral smelling and tasting oolong on the first steep (in a good way). On the second steep it balances out more with earthy/minerally notes. I originally only intended to have one mug of this while watching a movie, but I was enjoying it and drinking it down so fast, I kept pausing the movie to go make more. Has a creamy mouthfeel. I bought more of this 2 years after the initial review and it has some scents that remind me of cinnamon kind of.

I tried brewing this two different ways today, in a porcelain gaiwan and a terracotta clay teapot; I’ve always found a bitter taste to (most) oolongs, and a friend suggested I try brewing them in clay to reduce that, which I think works, but I’ve not tested side-by-side with the same tea ’til now.

Gaiwan-Brewed
3g-4g in a gaiwan using 95C water at about 30 seconds per steep. I re-infused the leaves about five times, and both my housemate and I tasted the liquor of each infusion. He found it pleasant, mild and sweetly vegetal; I found it mouth-puckeringly, nose-wrinkling bitter, and getting worse with each infusion until I couldn’t drink any more of it.

Clay Teapot-Brewed
7g in 500ml of 95C water in a terracotta clay teapot, 5-minute steeps for 3 infusions. Again, my housemate and I shared the liquor. This time we both found it mildly grassy with a pleasant sweetness, a faint earthy undertone, and a slightly spicy aftertaste. The final infusion was brighter and milder than earlier steeps, and it had lost the earthy undertone entirely.

I’m rating this tea on my clay-brewed experience of it because the extreme bitterness is something I seem to get with a lot of porcelain/glass brewed oolongs, and which most people don’t seem to find (or at least not to the same extent).

Brewed to my own peculiar tastes, this is an oolong I’d drink day-to-day; it’s not astonishingly captivating, but it’s nicely refreshing with mild flavours.

This is one of the oolongs that has tons of reviews on Steepster, with the ratings going from the 60s into the mid- 90s: intriguingly divisive. Which is a bit surprising since one thing must be appealing to almost anyone: its wet leaf smell. There is a lot of things going on with the notes of minerals, asparagus, butter, spinach, broccoli, delicate flowers, green apple, seawater and who knows what else. I could just sit and smell it for hours like a shelf of scented candles in the store (which I am hopelessly guilty of doing).

The taste is delicate and takes some time to develop, especially if one starts drinking it while still piping hot (the instructions recommend 212 degree water). I prepared it Western and it proved to be very amenable to carefree steeping with very little danger of overdoing it.
The taste largely follows the nose, with the caveat that the herbal and green vegetable notes tend to dominate. It lingers and develops on the mouth, leaving a buttery and minty aftertaste.

It is a very pleasant and reliable tea like a genuinely nice and friendly acquaintance. Not the most outlandish, not the most expressive, not the one that powerfully commands your attention but someone that you are always happy to meet and spend some time with.

The floral in this is almost non existent. In the early days, when I wasn’t fond of floral, I recall that high mountain oolongs were my less flowery gateway into appreciation of stronger florals, but I don’t remember them being this lacking in the floral department.

Nevertheless, this is a good oolong. Nutty, creamy, bready. It’s like Teavivre’s Superfine Taiwan Qing Xiang Dong Ding Oolong Tea without the floral. If I pay attention, I can detect a slight floral aroma and a mild sweet taste that may or may not be attributed to a floral flavor. Perhaps I’ve become desensitized to the florals and don’t notice them as well when they are subtle.

Got this as a sample in my last order. While this is a pleasant mild tea with light sweet pea notes, it’s no standout, especially compared to Teavivre’s many other oolong offerings. Still glad I got to try it though.

Very reminiscent of a Chinese Tin Kuan Yin, yet with different complexities. This is my first Taiwan high mountain tea and it will certainly not be my last. I love how the taste varies over many steepings. The aromas are very nice and refreshing. Definitely recommend!

What is that soggy-leaf flavor that some teas have? If I could pinpoint this, I think I’d be much better able to identify my own tea preferences. Is it the ‘floral’ note?

Definitely sticking to oolongs with a ‘roasted’ flavor profile in the future.

I get a lot of vegetal and mineral with this one. I like oolongs a lot, but this isn’t my favorite style. It would be a good summer oolong, very crisp and fresh tasting.

Backlog:

I do love Teavivre. One of the best companies out there. Seriously. Especially if you’re looking for a top-notch Oolong.

I mention in my full-length review of this tea, found here: http://sororiteasisters.com/2014/11/20/taiwan-high-mountain-oolong-tea-from-teavivre/ that the wording of the description of this tea sounds as though this is a ‘beginner’ type of Oolong. I certainly don’t consider myself a beginner since I’ve had quite a lot of Oolong teas over the past six years or so as a tea reviewer, but I think that this is a tea that even a more advanced Oolong drinker can enjoy.

It isn’t as creamy as some High Mountain Oolong teas and I also found this to be less floral than most green Oolongs. This has more of a delicate flavor to it and I do understand why this is considered a ‘beginner’ Oolong because sometimes those new to Oolong teas are somewhat put off by the strong floral qualities of green Oolong teas.

This tea is soft, sweet, and subtle. It has a silky texture. Hints of melon in the background. Later infusions proved to be a little more floral than the first, but was still a very pleasant, easy drinking tea.