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It’s not bad really, but only because it’s so bland. I mean, yeah the flavor is chamomile, but rather weak and not very exciting (even for chamomile, which isn’t exactly a party anyway). So we’ll go with ‘meh’.

I’ve actually had this tea before – many, many years ago before I even knew what red tea was. I’m not really sure what I thought of it then, but I don’t think it was all that positive. Based on the smell, I don’t think that view is going to be changing any today. It basically smells like a lightly lemoned plank of soured, wet, moldy wood. The sourness in the smell makes my mouth water unpleasantly.

Okay, this is gross. Like, gross nasty made me gag a little when I sipped gross. The first taste is tart and unpleasant, then it shifts to woody and slightly less unpleasant and then it finishes with a sour and really freaking unpleasant.

Ever let a cat sniff toothpaste? For some reason one of my cats likes to sniff random things – toothpaste, nail polish, breath – and every time she sniffs toothpaste, she makes this really unpleasant face as she gets close to the source. She squints her eyes, flares her lips a little. Then she takes a big whiff… and promptly gags for the next few seconds.

Yeah, that’s me drinking this tea.

Maybe the sink will enjoy it more.

Thanks to sophistre, I get a chance to try a new Bohea. Yay! I just had Teas Etc’s Bohea this morning, so I can’t help but make comparisons. If I didn’t know better, I would swear they aren’t the same type of tea. This one is much milder (in color, smell and taste) than the Teas Etc Bohea. The smoky flavor – which is rich and thick in the TE version – is mild here, somewhat of an afterthought. The first descriptor that crossed my mind with this one, both when smelling and tasting, was ‘sweet’. Because it is. It’s sweet, soft, gentle and has a hint of smoke in the aftertaste that kind of poofs up my sinuses after a sip.

But that makes it sound like, compared to TE’s Bohea, ToT’s version is lacking. It isn’t. It’s just totally different. TE’s version reminds me of lapsang with the edges smoothed out and no tar. ToT’s version reminds me of TeaSpring’s Tan Yang Te Ji with less oomph and MPD-esque complexity. I have to be in a smoky tea mood to drink TE’s Bohea. This one, being milder, wouldn’t require a smoky mood.

So even though they are the same type of tea, they really are totally different. I could see keeping both in my pantry without feeling I was duplicating teas. I could also see using this one as a tea to ease a newbie into smoky teas. It’s really quite tasty.

The second steep (5min) is a little milder than I hoped for (still tasty though) so I think next time I’ll extend that steep a bit for a touch more flavor.

You know what? This is pretty okay. I generally have difficulty with the syrup-y sweet dirt taste is cooked pu-erhs, but this one seems a little muted. It has the same notes but doesn’t feel as thick. I really think it is the orange rind that provides this counterbalance.

I’m giving this a tiny bump simply because I used the whole orange (broken up) and about half of the rind for a 10oz cup and, while more intense than my previous cups, still isn’t too thick for me to enjoy. And I am enjoying it. Not like huge enjoyment or anything, but still some enjoyment.

So apparently New Zealand can make some tea. Who knew? But yeah, this is some seriously tasty stuff.

Normally I’m not one for using boiling water on greener oolongs. However, the directions printed inside the tea’s packaging say use boiling water and, given that Zealong’s packaging is pretty serious (a vacuum-sealed bag of tea inside a matte black square tin which sits snugly in the foam bottom of a large, magnetic-close box), I’m going to take their directions seriously, too. Zealong also says you can take this up to 8 steeps. I’m not sure I can make it that long, even if the tea can, but we’ll see.

The dry leaves have a very faint smell to them. Very faint. Even the liquid is fairly lightly scented, but it is a delicious smell anyway.
Steep 1 (1min): Sipping is kind of wow. It’s rich – dark, heavy, sweet, floral at first. Slurping a bit makes the flavor lighten up more and becomes like a fresh lemongrass flavor. As it cools, that almost-lemon-candy note comes up more and more. There’s a little dryness left behind after each sip, along with a lovely sweet, floral/fruity taste.

Steep 2 (1min): The main reason I don’t use boiling water on oolongs is that it seems that the leaves can get easily cooked and that smell and taste is kind of gross to me. After pouring the tea, these leaves now have a bit of that cooked scent about them, but instead of smelling like over-boiled collard greens, it’s like toasted bread… with some lemon preserves smeared on top. The tea, though, doesn’t have any overcooked-ness to it but there is a darker note to it that wasn’t present in the first steep. Also, the fresh lemongrass note has turned into a more lemon preserves note. The astringency is still there and adds a bit of texture at the end of the sip.

Steep 3 (1min): The flavor is darker now. The lemon note is gone and replaced with an almost honey note. Slurping brings out a woody flavor. There might be a hint of something almost spicy, or I might be insane.

Steep 4 (2min): Heavier again with the nuances and light notes of the first steep kind of muddied up a bit but still not overcooked. And is the lemon back some? And maybe something that reminds me of cream… (Though that could have been the sip of half & half I took while making the hubby some EG, but it continues to stick around so maybe it’s the tea.)

Steep 5 (3min): The leaves are smelling pretty done now but the done-ness hasn’t come into the tea. It’s darker, heavier, thicker and a little more one-note tasting than previous steeps but there’s still a faint hint of lemon/lemon preserves.

Steep 6 (4min): Might be tasting a little overcooked now? Still has a lot of the same tastes as steep 5, though.

Okay, I’m done. Seriously, I’ve had a lot of oolong – it might be coming out of my pores at this point. Could the tea take a couple of more steeps? Maybe. Can I? Nope. But I will say that this is seriously good stuff though. Congrats, New Zealand, for making good tea!
5g/5oz

PS – Just watched the documentary All in This Tea. Definitely recommend it to any tea lover out there!

This tea, take 12. Okay, it’s more like take 3 but whatever. This time, I’m following JacquelineM’s suggestion of lower temp water. She recommended 195° but my Zojirushi was set on 208 and I was lazy so I did 208° → cup → pause → teapot. That leaves me a bit iffy on temperature but whatever it was totally worked because now the astringency that previously camped out on my tongue and did it’s best to turn into bitterness is now just a crisp dryness throughout the sip.

It’s still froufrou but better blended – I can almost actually pick up some bergamot! There’s a better balance of flavors and it seems a bit stronger. Well, stronger isn’t quite the right word because it is a soft tea, but it doesn’t seem like a weak third steep anymore.

I still can’t fully get behind this because I feel like it is still a bit heavy handed on the floral tastes but this is worlds more enjoyable than my previous additive-less cup so I’m giving the rating a nice bump.

Dude, I don’t know what it is, but this tea has made me so caffeinated this morning. I don’t remember this one being all that powerful caffeine-wise so maybe something else is at play? Or maybe just the fact that I had 12oz instead of a smaller cup? Or perhaps because I didn’t have enough tea to finish out my cup so I did a 50/50 blend with A+D’s Nepal? (Though I don’t recall Nepal being a big caffeine rush either.) Regardless, my hands are all shaky and I’m feeling obnoxiously bouncy. And I might have been singing something about caffeine in my bloodstream when I came in to work today. Maybe.

Anyway, yeah, decupboarding this one which is kind of sad. It’s a Darjeeling-flavor that I can totally get behind, I think because the Keemun smooths it out some and keeps that tannic, sometimes super-bright, citrusy end taste at the end of most Darjeelings from being jarring or unpleasant for me. Today’s version of this was interesting though because I did have to do a 50/50 blend with Nepal. I added a little sugar (because I’m forever scared of being stuck with a bitter tea in my travel tumbler) and ended up with the overwhelming taste of honeyed green beans.

Seriously. Ceremony + Nepal + 1tsp sugar + travel tumbler = honeyed green beans.

It was weird and I had some flashbacks of bad Silver Needle experiences with a flat soybean water taste, but this had a nice sweetness and distinct honey taste, so it wasn’t a one note green bean wonder. Instead, it was really quite pleasant. Still a little weird for black teas to make me think of a white tea, but whatever.

A different sendoff for this tea, but a fun one. And a caffeinated one. WHEE!

Trying a different brewing method for my second try of this. This time I’m doing a lazy man’s sencha-style brewin because anything else required too much thought. 4g/6oz/ 175°/pour started at about 30s.

Yum. Each sip tastes a little different – sometimes I get a pungent, sweet, vegetal sencha, then other sips give me a sweet, hay-ish taste that makes me think of Rishi’s Snow Buds but richer. Sometimes it tastes very much like a Japanese green. Other times I think I’m drinking a Chinese green. But not a dull green, salty Chinese green. Fresh, bright green with nice sweetness and no salty/mineral-y tingle. I’m also not getting the astringency I was previously, which is fine by me because I’m kind of a wuss when it comes to that.

I’m upping the rating on this just a bit because this is very tasty. I could see myself buying more of this.

Aww, somebody brought me tea! I mean, sure, it’s tart and hibiscusy and oddly makes me think of cinnamon, but dude, somebody brought me tea! Yay!

Honestly, I’m not feeling all that great today so it’s not the best time for me to try a new tea, but my order from CTG just came in and it had this interesting little beastie in it and I just couldn’t resist.

There are two different ways to prepare this, plus I’ve got my own sort of default prep method, giving me three different ways I want to try this tea at to see what it gives me. For this first attempt, I decided to go with the ‘high flavor brew’. 4g/4oz, 175° for 45s. The tea smells very vegetal with a hint of buttery. The first part of the taste is refreshingly astringent with a very vegetal/green and a little sweet and buttery flavor. The aftertaste is astringent but sweet. And now my cup is empty.

4oz almost isn’t enough to figure out what I think of this tea. I could probably do without the astringent aftertaste, but I kind of like how it shows up at the front of the sip. The other flavors in the tea are also very promising but I’ll have to have more of it to figure out how much I like it. And that will give me a chance to play with parameters, too. So right now the rating is tentative, subject to change with more parameter playing and when I’m feeling more chipper.

ETA: I messed up the second steep (too much water) but it ended up nice anyway – the vegetal taste of a Chinese green, the sweetness of a Japanese green. I did a 5s steep, treating it like I would a Japanese green and I probably could have given it a touch more time since it tasted a little thin, but at the same time the shorter steep time probably kept any astringency down.