Supreme Red Robe

Thanks to Amy Oh for this one!

Dry Leaf – Sweet and roasty
Wet Leaf – Tobacco, roasty, sweet

I like this Oolong. Thank you again Amy. I’ve had TONS of ‘Red Robe’, 95% of then have been pretty much ‘crap’. I feel this is a good Oolong, I can enjoy. Most Red Robes taste like they had too much low quality Mi Lan Xiang and decided to burn it and call it Red Robe. Very few people know what the real Red Robe tastes like and I’m not one of them, but if I’m going for a different tea I want to find differences, not just almost burnt tea. Sorry for the rant.

The tea is Roasty, smoky and tobacco-like that then turns sweet. The liquid is smooth and warming as it goes down and the after taste is tobacco-like with sweetness that is very pleasant and filling. I like this one after lunch or a dinner.

It is very pleasant and warming. :)

yep, I am a sucker for any store that says it has a free tea tasting. This is a very large shop in Chinatown here in SF that has quite a wide selection of tea and a very friendly staff. This was the boyfriend’s selection so we brewed it up this morning in the Gaiwan.

I can’t say that I know enough about red robes to really say that this one is really so much better than any other one but I am enjoying it this morning. When the leaves are wet they are intensely smoky and smell of cherries and plums. This brews up to a nice reddish color – in the shop they call it “red tea” and not an oolong but I digress. Here is a nice composition of flavors with some fruitiness, some nuttiness, a bit of smoke and a tiny bit of sourness. It is holding a nice fizzy aftertaste on my tongue.

Delicious oolong, very nice mouthfeel. The flavor really develops in later steepings.