Tea type
Oolong Tea
Ingredients
Not available
Flavors
Toasty, Wood
Sold in
Not available
Caffeine
Not available
Certification
Not available
Edit tea info Last updated by Carolyn
Average preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 2 min, 45 sec

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From Our Community

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37 Tasting Notes View all

  • “My bowl of Matcha disappeared fast! I haven’t had any Oolong tea lately, and I’ve missed it. And this is an excellent Oolong! Very nice, natural honey-like essence to it that presents itself in...” Read full tasting note
    91
  • “MandyB is soooo good to me! Thanks for this one, too, girlie! This is a neat cup! It’s roasty, toasty, buttery, slippery, Sweet like honey, nutty, it’s just NEAT. I am not sure how I get all of...” Read full tasting note
    89
  • “First of all I’m not an Oolong expert by any means. That being said this tea is very good. I really can’t explain any of the flavors although I get a touch of honey and fruit. The tea has a...” Read full tasting note
    78
  • “Smells like a slightly toasted Nilgiri but fortunately it doesn’t have the raw taste I associate with Nilgiris. Instead, this tastes like roasted nori sheets – a little fishy, a little soy...” Read full tasting note
    76

From The Simple Leaf

Honeybee is produced in tiny quantities by our dear friend Madan Tamang at his family’s Meghma Tea Estate. At 7,000 feet, it is one of the highest, and most remote, tea growing areas in the world! This gorgeous hand-crafted, oolong tea is made using traditional Taiwanese methods adapted for use in Nepal. After plucking, the leaves are hand rolled, covered with cloth and spread out on a table to dry. When infused, the tea exudes the aroma of native Daphne bholua and Rhododendron plants, with a slight touch of honey and fruit. Honeybee is one of our most popular favorites, and is perfect any time of day. Enjoy hot or iced.

Be sure to check out our exclusive Behind The Cup interview with the producer of this tea. It’s a remarkable story of one man’s passion for oolong tea and for the slowly disappearing Rhododendron forests in his beloved Nepal.

Origin Meghma Estate / Ilam, Nepal

Brewing 1 tsp. / 6oz cup
160 – 180° boiling water
3 minute infusion

About The Simple Leaf View company

Company description not available.

37 Tasting Notes

91
4843 tasting notes

My bowl of Matcha disappeared fast!

I haven’t had any Oolong tea lately, and I’ve missed it. And this is an excellent Oolong!

Very nice, natural honey-like essence to it that presents itself in the aroma as well as the flavor. Happily, I can taste the floral notes of this tea – One of the things that had kept me from drinking too many of my favorite teas now while I’m sick is the fact that I was worried that in their impaired state my taste buds would not pick up on the more delicate features of those teas. Not so with this particular cup. A lovely floral flavor that melds so well with the natural sweetness. Slightly woodsy. Even a hint of buttery flavor.

YUM!

It is so comforting and delicious. Just what I needed this afternoon.

My review of this tea for the Tea Review Blog recently published, wanna check it out? Here it is:

http://www.teareviewblog.com/?p=12497

Preparation
185 °F / 85 °C 2 min, 15 sec
Cofftea

That’s the one thing I don’t like about koicha or usucha- not much liquid so it disappears fast:(

LiberTEAS

The second infusion of this tea is even better than the first. Sweeter, smoother, and the mouthfeel is even more pleasant – slightly thicker and richer in buttery flavor.

LiberTEAS

I managed four very flavorful infusions from this tea… I probably could have managed a fifth but I think that I’m ready to move on to something different.

Lori

So far, all of the oolongs I have sampled have been VERY SUBTLE. Is this the case w/this one as well? Or is the flavor bolder than typical?

TeaEqualsBliss

OH! So YOU started the Honeybee trend! :P

LiberTEAS

@Lori: Oolong, typically, is not going to be as bold as a black tea, but, it is a bit less subtle than a green tea. This one isn’t “bold” but the honey flavor is not what I would call subtle either.
@TeaEqualsBliss – I guess so! LOL

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89
6768 tasting notes

MandyB is soooo good to me! Thanks for this one, too, girlie!

This is a neat cup! It’s roasty, toasty, buttery, slippery, Sweet like honey, nutty, it’s just NEAT. I am not sure how I get all of these individual components to this Oolong in my sip but I am glad I do.

I say Ooooo…
YOU say LONG

Ooooo…

TeaEqualsBliss

Woot! Woot! I GOTTA Ooooo…LONG!
Thanks chick-a-dee!

AmazonV

lol, starting a girl band are we?

TeaEqualsBliss

Girl Bands ROCK! :P

BTW…this is really good ICED, too!

wombatgirl

Love that song. Except I do like my herbals. ;)

TeaEqualsBliss

Herbal…no thanks…lol…well, most herbals NO THANKS…Foxtrot, I will make an exception and minty-ones…

SoccerMom

I can’t say “yes, please to the Earl Grey part” but love the oo you say long part!

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78
429 tasting notes

First of all I’m not an Oolong expert by any means. That being said this tea is very good. I really can’t explain any of the flavors although I get a touch of honey and fruit. The tea has a sweetness to it. The smells are alien to me but the tea is smooth, mellow and tasty. It tastes nothing like Formosa Oolong by Harney and Sons. It taste much lighter with a light mouthfeel. The flavors seem to come through the cooler the tea becomes.

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 3 min, 0 sec
Shanti

I’m loving all of your Simple Leaf reviews…

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76
911 tasting notes

Smells like a slightly toasted Nilgiri but fortunately it doesn’t have the raw taste I associate with Nilgiris. Instead, this tastes like roasted nori sheets – a little fishy, a little soy sauce-y, fairly vegetal and crisp. It’s quite tasty and makes me crave rice with nori sheets.

Hmm, second steep isn’t nearly as nifty. The smell still brings to mind a Nilgiri and the taste has migrated from toasted nori sheets to a mix of wakame seaweed and Nilgiri rawness. I definitely prefer the first steep.
2.5g/5oz

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 3 min, 0 sec
Kristin

Oh man, this one is on my shopping list and now I am really glad I haven’t ordered it yet. I hate fishy and I hate Nori.

Auggy

Well, I didn’t notice any other notes mentioning nori so maybe it is just me?

Kristin

I’m not taking any chances with fishy! :)

Auggy

Okay, can’t blame you on that!

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64
158 tasting notes

Upped the amount of leaf significantly this go-around to see if I could pull a more saturated liquor out of the leaves. I think I did…but the result is still undeveloped and somehow unconvincing to sip on. It’s completely inoffensive as a tea, but there just isn’t much substance to it at all, and what is there isn’t intriguing enough to make hunting for it with focus a worthwhile time.

Not bad. I would drink it again without hesitation…but I won’t be sad when I run out of it.

Dan

I had to use more leaf and steep longer to get this tea where I liked it.

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65
260 tasting notes

I got a bag of Honeybee in a swap I did with Carolyn because she suspected I’d like it [and she was right]. It brews into a beautiful, deep gold, honeyed hue, but the taste is extremely light.

For me, the majority of the taste for this resides at the back of the tongue, and a bit at the sides. At the front, I get some light floral notes that are much less obvious when the tea is hot, but at the back…mmm…

When the tea is VERY hot [like right when it becomes drinkable], it’s difficult for me to get much of a taste out of this tea at all, so on my second cup I let it cool down a bit more before I got started and I found it to be much more enjoyable that way. The honey taste is definitely evident for me in the aftertaste, and if I inhale through my nose while the tea is still in my mouth I can taste it near my throat.

Again, it’s a very light tea. While part of me likes that, I also find myself wanting just a liiiittle bit more from it. I need to work to get the flavor, and while that’s fine when I’m concentrating on the tea, I feel like this is going to be a tea that I can only enjoy when I’m concentrating on it. I’ll play around with a longer steep time to see if that makes it a little bit stronger, but in the meantime this is a good tea. Thanks, Carolyn!

Preparation
165 °F / 73 °C 3 min, 0 sec
Shanti

I had trouble getting any honey taste from it, despite the name. I wonder if Honeybee refers to a honey taste, or to the way the flavor reflects some of the nearby plants…

Okay, so the description says “When infused, the tea exudes the aroma of native Daphne bholua and Rhododendron plants, with a slight touch of honey and fruit.”

So maybe it’s both :)

takgoti

It could very well be! I lean towards honey tasting because the depth of the sweetness had this darkness to that I associate with honey, but the flavor is so light and I’m sure that some of it’s my subconscious associating with the name of the tea. Carolyn sent me enough to give this a few goes, so I’m sure I’ll be trying it again soon!

Shanti

I think I’m going to try this one again to see if I can pick out any honey. I got “floral sweetness” from it but not honey or sugar sweetness. I remember one of the Simple Leaf greens I tried tasted a lot like honey, but I can’t remember which one…maybe Maharani or Chloe?

takgoti

Carolyn actually sent me samples of both of those [as well as your namesake tea :) ], so I’ll be able to test the honey comparison in the near future!

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69
476 tasting notes

I decided to skip the last untried Tea Desire tea I’d purchased and try this one. I didn’t want anything black for the late evening.

It smells very deeply vegetal, like that bagged ti guan yin I have.

Luckily it doesn’t taste anything like that. It’s light, but dark, not green, more closer to a very milk black. But not a Darjeeling black. I’m not tasting anything significant right now, but it’s still quite hot.

But I like the bright honey colour. I hope I see some semblance of the name in the taste when it cools a bit more. However, enjoyable so far. I think this is my kind of oolong. Not green, but definitely far enough away from black for a difference in taste.

When I breath out I’m getting that sort of Ceylon black taste that reminds me of honey (not in the taste, just in the Black Tea And Honey = The Perfect Match mind-set I grew up with as a kid). With that is a bit of Black-style astringency. But there’s also the sort of oolong taste I remember from Jade Teapot’s ti guan yin. Hard to explain.

There is almost a touch of bitterness as well. I spent some time trying to decide if I should go with two minutes or three, because the package reads three, but looking over the tasting notes many did two minutes instead. Perhaps next time I will try a lower temperature as well. Their samples are pretty hefty, I have a lot to experiment with.

I’m not getting any touch of the honey factor, but when I take large gulps I get a sweetness, and overall it has an appealing smoothness. Also getting more of a nutness. It’s odd, it smells vegetal but doesn’t taste it. I think someone said woodsy, and I can see that too, somehow, even though I don’t know what ‘woodsy’ should taste like. Deep, I guess.

The second steep has a sharper taste, less dryness.

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 3 min, 0 sec

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59
411 tasting notes

Today is an amazingly annoying day. I’m herding cats, apparently through minefields. So I’m trying to not scream at people and drink lots of tea. I’m starting with some of this iced.. I think I brewed this too strong, but I think overall I may just like this better iced than not. We’ll see..

Cross your fingers for me!

__Morgana__

Fingers crossed! Keep those cats away from those mines!

Auggy

Uh oh! May large amounts of tea make cat herding easier! (Can anything make cat herding easier? Probably not, but here’s hoping!)

Rabs

::HUGE HUG::

AmazonV

Sound like programmers in a situation they need to be polite and politic? good luck

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79
236 tasting notes

I confess, I’m always a bit leery of oolongs. I’ve had so much bad luck with them that I approach them much as I do pu-erhs, with a “Chin up! Be brave!” admonition. But I remembered I liked this tea from The Simple Leaf (and I love the company), so I thought I would try it this afternoon. Hopefully it will help quell my hunger pangs until I can get home and eat something healthy.

The fragrance is honey sweet and the liquor looks like honey as well. The taste has floral notes, honey, and a slight sharpness that I can see would veer into bitterness with a longer, hotter steep. It’s nice.

Preparation
160 °F / 71 °C 3 min, 0 sec
Suzi

This one sounds really nice, but I love honey :D

Carolyn

As it cools the honey becomes even more prominent. If you love honey, you’ll love this.

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94
251 tasting notes

Yum!! I had this tea hot with vanilla soy ceamer for breakfast. It has a nice sweet flavor that asserts itself well with the creamer. BUT—I liked it even better iced! You can get a lot of infusions out of this tea, I made the third one iced and it was quite good. It has a cooling kind of aftertaste that suites iced tea well.

Definitely a keeper!

takgoti

Hmm…as summer humidity is already beginning to taint the weather here, I shall have to try this iced.

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