My sample of this was mislabelled as Golden Spiral and I first put the following note under that tea, so I’m transferring it here. Note that, as this is an oolong, in this note I’ve brewed at the wrong temperature:
This is from a small, free sample.
First of all, I have to say that this doesn’t look much like its picture. The strands are rather straighter and uniformly dark in colour – they’re quite big, coarse strands.
The instructions say two to four minutes so I brewed a cup for three minutes, boiling water, with a heaped teaspoon.
It made a clear, light to medium intensity, orange-brown brew, looking yellow-brown round the miniscus.
There was a quite strong aroma. It reminded me of green vegetation on a warm, damp day with a touch of freshly-turned soil, or, perhaps, the racks of vegetables in the supermarket – cabbages and various greens mingled with the smell of soil from the potatoes and so forth. It’s one of the strongest-smelling brews I’ve had for quite a while.
In the mouth it was a little bit of a surprise. The notes of the aroma are there, but mixed with a definite note of chocolate or cocoa. So it’s a combination of basic tea, earthiness, green vegetation and cocoa. It’s actually quite complex as I’m detecting elusive little hints, underneath. There’s a very, very faint bite, possibly that ‘smell of nettles’ note, or, perhaps, some herb, like thyme or rosemary. Again, I’m not sure if there was the tiniest hint of orange – vanishingly small, if it’s there.
This is an excellent mug of tea.
I tried a second infusion, though the website doesn’t mention multiple infusions – boiling water and three minutes again.
This was noticeably less intense in colour – a clear yellow-orange.
In the nose the green vegetation was less noticeable – the aroma was still unusually strong, but more earthy.
The flavour was much the same overall, though slightly ‘thinner’; but I couldn’t detect those tiny hints of orange and herbs.
This was quite a good cup of tea, but not as good as the first.
On the whole, I think I’d call this an excellent tea and I’m going to seriously consider buying some next time I put in an order to them.
It didn’t look like its picture because it was mislabelled, of course. Now this note’s in the right place it DOES look like its picture.