Golden Lily Oolong

Of the five teas I purchased from BTT, this was the least impressive. I have to agree with the other reviewers, this Golden Lily pales in comparison to Whispering Pines. It has a very buttery quality, as in someone dropped a pat of butter in my cup. Steeped gongfu there is also a bit of floral and a touch of sugarcane sweetness. But there’s no real complexity to this tea. It’s drinkable, but kind of forgettable.

BTTC is one of my favorite and I poured about $500 into them last year so saying this isn’t so easy for me: After having Whsipering Pines golden lily…. everything else will probably compare as lesser. While this is a wonderful product, with subtle sweet notes of fruit to it, it’s
These are nicely rolled mid-range green oolong pieces with a decent aroma level that makes you aware that it’s a variant of milk oolong. The brewing of this tea is quite simple and can get decent four steeps out of it. I really enjoyed the second steep the most with it’s more mellow notes and more oolong’ness comes out as the leaf unravels. I’m pretty sure this would make for a nice cold brew as well, but I don’t cold brew often.

My first two tries with this tea were failures. My problem? I didn’t rinse the leaves. Its amazing how much of a difference that makes!

1st steep. Vegetal flavors. Nothing milky. Kinda more of a green then an oolong. Also some hay and grass notes.

2nd steep. Getting smoother. Still more vegetal though.

3rd steep. Bam! Nice and silky. Milk qualities and flavors coming out. If it wasn’t 10pm I would keep going but I want to sleep tonight.

This is pretty good – very creamy, but as it cools it gets very floral. I found it to be rather strong – I feel like a teaspoon ended up tasting a bit overleafed and bitter for 8oz of water. Which is great – more tea savings for me. :) Not to mention the three resteeps…

Beautiful Taiwan Tea’s Golden Lily Oolong 2014

Unlike What-Cha’s Jin Xuan this is unflavored. This was the first of BTT’s that I have tried and this is the tea that sold me on the company, while it isn’t as nuanced as the other GeoShanCha at BTT, it is wonderful, I almost want to say it is my favorite, but whenever I purchase this tea I always drink it all within a week and I won’t want to drink anything else besides this tea.

This feels like a more traditional Jin Xuan, and unlike the Fujian Milk oolong from What-cha, this has a very thick mouthfeel, almost syrupy. This is primarily milky (more a sweet creamy butter then milk though), but I can taste a little bit of nutty vegetables, and some strong floral notes. While I don’t have as much to say about this Jin Xuan, I’ll just say this leaves me breathless and when I am done I regret not having more.

(“Breath Taking” photography at: http://rah-tea.blogspot.com/2014/11/what-chas-fujian-milk-oolong-jin-xuan.html)

This is my second oolong form BTTC. It definitely had the biggest oolong pearls of all the oolongs that I own. The bright blue green wads of wavy mossy leaves felt nice and silky in my hands. The leaves themselves smelled very fresh, with vegetal and buttery notes. I also detected hyacinth floral hints. Funny enough, I did not know that this was a milk oolong when I drank it. I enjoyed the melted butter and heavy whipping cream quality I held in my mouth. It stayed consistently floral and sweet, playing around with candied orange peel and lilies throughout all my steepings in my gaiwan. Although not as fragrant or refined as their BaoZhong or a Lishan, I had a lot of fun watching the leaves explode in my cup.

This tea is from my secret pumpkin Cheri. Thank you!

It is coming! I have the chills, the aches, and the scratchy throat. This will probably be the last session of nice tea I will get to have for a few days. 2 months without getting sick. That is a record since my daughter was born. Hopefully this bug will pass fast and the tea awesomeness will be able to continue.

I enjoyed this tea while doing my meal prep for the week. This is such a lovely tea. It is not as milky as a few milk oolongs that I have had, but it is buttery, floral and sweet. This tea has just kept giving and giving and giving. I brewed this in the beautiful new gaiwan that Cheri also sent. Unfortunately I did not get any pictures. I will try to get one next time. I can’t wait to spend some more time with this tea.

This is a good milk oolong. It has an almost nutty quality to it. It definitely has some of those cream flavors you expect from a decent milk oolong and also has a little bit of floral aspect to it during the steeping process. I got 7-8 good steeps out of it before it quit. It’s a good value at about $5.50/ oz.

This was a nice tea. It’s kept me company all morning and into the afternoon.

Creamy, sweet, buttery, just a touch floral. It’s not as milky as some milk oolongs feel, but it still has a very nice mouth feel and taste. I am enjoying it quite a bit. It’s got a very light flavor. It’s not my favorite milk oolong, but it’s a nice tea.