I got this one as a sample. I didn’t think they’d give out expensive tea samples! I just mentioned that it’d interested me for a while but was WAY out of my price range. It’s a ridiculously generous sample to.
It smells like a sort of thick woodsy amber—amber like the perfume scent amber—almost bordering on babypowder, I guess? Very perfumy. I looked into it, and oud is a type of heartwood that they let get attacked by a fungus, producing a strongly scented resin. This is a mixture of that (I think), cedar and tea flowers. Can only see the dried resin bits, though. Weirdly, no where on the wiki page does it say oud/agarwood/calambac is used in foods.
It’s surprisingly smooth tasting, with the oud/calambac sitting in the back of your throat after each sip. It does kind of overpower the taste of tea. It’s hard to describe, because it feels very one-note since I have no experience with… uh. ‘Oud’. There’s the slightest astringency on the back of the tongue, and something like cedar on the forefront.
I do like it, actually. But I’m not about to dump the money to get a few ounces. I drank it at five minutes earlier in the week (didn’t log), but four minutes smooths it out much more. Maybe I’ll try five minutes again next time to try and get a better idea of the profile.
Flavors: Cedar, Resin
Preparation
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I have to wonder if the company used real oud in the blend. First, it’s endangered and second it’s extremely expensive and as you said, not something generally used in food. The scent of oud differs greatly, depending on age and other factors, but it is never amber-y. It can smell like petrol or smoke, but there is nothing sweet about it, even the cheaper grades. Nevertheless, this was an interesting and thought provoking review that makes me want to try the tea myself!
I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t. Their sites rarely list proper ingredients.
No smoke, but I could describe it as petrol; definitely not sweet. Amber might not be the right word, because I haven’t smelt enough of it.
Sorta like pine and cedar sap, though.
Pardon me while I scent nerd out…
I collect vintage perfume and am a certified aromatherapist. Oud (aka oudh) has gotten ‘trendy’ in perfumery over the past several years and nearly every house has something with oud in it. Undoubtedly 99.9% of it is from the laboratory, not the heart of a tree. Why someone would claim to put it in tea (or put something oud-like in tea for that matter) puzzles me. Of course, perhaps the promise of ingesting such an exotic ingredient has market appeal.
Amber (in perfumery) has a soft, powdery, vanilla-ish scent. It is created using combinations of labdanum, benzoin resin, copal (itself a type of tree resin used in incense manufacture), vanilla, Dammara resin and/or synthetic materials. It is not the stuff that prehistoric insects get trapped in, nor is is whale vomit-ambergris.
DELETEless than a minute ago
That definitely fits the bill for TWG. They have teas with gold dust or flakes for no other reason than so it can cost $30/oz.
No actual wood chips present in this one, though:
https://media.steepster.com/api/file/nFBNEmmATYGvRr39eSZ2/convert?fit=max&h=480&w=940
It’s got a sort of powderyness to babypowder that makes me think of amber without the full on vanilla.
I’m shaking my head. The picture is lovely. If nothing else, I loved your description and this also gave me a chance to enjoy a lot more of your past reviews.
Thank you.
I have to wonder if the company used real oud in the blend. First, it’s endangered and second it’s extremely expensive and as you said, not something generally used in food. The scent of oud differs greatly, depending on age and other factors, but it is never amber-y. It can smell like petrol or smoke, but there is nothing sweet about it, even the cheaper grades. Nevertheless, this was an interesting and thought provoking review that makes me want to try the tea myself!
I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t. Their sites rarely list proper ingredients.
No smoke, but I could describe it as petrol; definitely not sweet. Amber might not be the right word, because I haven’t smelt enough of it.
Sorta like pine and cedar sap, though.
Pardon me while I scent nerd out…
I collect vintage perfume and am a certified aromatherapist. Oud (aka oudh) has gotten ‘trendy’ in perfumery over the past several years and nearly every house has something with oud in it. Undoubtedly 99.9% of it is from the laboratory, not the heart of a tree. Why someone would claim to put it in tea (or put something oud-like in tea for that matter) puzzles me. Of course, perhaps the promise of ingesting such an exotic ingredient has market appeal.
Amber (in perfumery) has a soft, powdery, vanilla-ish scent. It is created using combinations of labdanum, benzoin resin, copal (itself a type of tree resin used in incense manufacture), vanilla, Dammara resin and/or synthetic materials. It is not the stuff that prehistoric insects get trapped in, nor is is whale vomit-ambergris.
DELETEless than a minute ago
That definitely fits the bill for TWG. They have teas with gold dust or flakes for no other reason than so it can cost $30/oz.
No actual wood chips present in this one, though:
https://media.steepster.com/api/file/nFBNEmmATYGvRr39eSZ2/convert?fit=max&h=480&w=940
It’s got a sort of powderyness to babypowder that makes me think of amber without the full on vanilla.
I’m shaking my head. The picture is lovely. If nothing else, I loved your description and this also gave me a chance to enjoy a lot more of your past reviews.
Thank you.