Luye Natural Farming Qing Xin "Roselle Nectar" Red Oolong Tea - Winter 2018

I’ve really enjoyed this tea.

Summary: This mild roast red oolong tea is tightly rolled and takes several steeps to open up completely. It is a semi-sweet tea that’s great as an after dinner tea or just anytime tea. It’s not an overly complex tea, but the flavors work well together.

Dry leaf smell: I catch whiffs of stone fruit and the associated sweetness.
Warm leaf: A stronger scent of stone fruit and honey.

I’ve had a couple of sessions with this tea. WATER: 150ml
Session 1: Time (seconds) 15, 20, 30, 40, 60, 80…; temp: 195-205 deg F
Session 2: Time – 30, 45, 60 @ 196 deg F) | 90s, 120s, 180s… @ 199-201 deg F

Wet leaves aroma: High notes of honey, florals, and stone fruit
Broth Aroma: Sweet potato
Color: The color of orange-flower honey. This remains fairly consistent.

The broth has a nectar-like consistency, like thinned honey. It’s not particularly viscous but does coat the tongue slightly. There’s an underlying astringency that dries out the tongue a tiny bit, but it’s never bitter. I get a mild tingling sensation in the tongue from the cha qi, and I did start to feel a bit in the head after the 4th steep.

Initial steeps brought out flavors of sweet potato, mild stone fruit, a touch of honey. As steeps progressed, there’s less fruit, less honey, and more sweet potato flavors. The tea has a short-to-medium clean finish to it that’s in keeping with the flavor profile. As I extended the steep times, I also increased the temperature. I managed to get a fair number of steeps out of this tea before the flavors began to wash out. For each session, I managed to get at least 6 steeps out of the 5 grams of tea.

Since there’s very little astringency to this tea, higher temps and longer brew times might bring out a different flavor profile. (A point to experiment with!)

Overall, this is a good tea, especially for the price point and the number of steeps you can get out of it. It’s not an overly complex tea, but the flavors are well-balanced and quite tasty. The sweetness comes from sweet potato/fruit flavor, so anyone who finds teas with fruity profiles too sweet might enjoy this a bit more.

This is a red oolong. I added the description from the YS website. It’s an interesting process to produce this tea. I’m having the light roasted version. When I opened the vacuum sealed bag, I took a sniff and didn’t smell much of anything. I let it air out for awhile and still not much smell in the dry leaf. It’s rolled very tightly and is very dry, so that’s probably why not much smell comes through. Each rolled leaf is about half the size of an M&M. Once it was placed into a heated Jianshui Zitao red clay teapot, the dry leaves released their aroma. This would be a fun blind tasting tea. I’ve never smelled a hibiscus, so I can’t comment on the Roselle Nectar notes. It did have a floral/fruity scent but it is also very much like a black tea in that it has some sweet potato and chocolate notes.

This is a tea to experience. It has some really interesting things going on. If you’ve ever had a Laoshan black tea, you know the dark chocolate brownie, sweet potato taste that comes through. It’s as if someone brewed a light roast fruity non-green-leaning oolong, and when no one was looking gave it a shot of Laoshan black tea. It’s a very unique experience. I love it. It’s a sweet tea. It has a good lasting aftertaste. No bitterness. There is a little astringency in the longer steeps, but not much. In the mouth, it has a lightness. It performed well with short steeps of a few seconds. I also pushed it out to about 2 minutes in a later steep, and had an interesting experience. The taste was similar, but there was a tingling sensation at the tip of the tongue and a sweetness. It was like having carbonated bubbles from Sprite dancing on the tip of my tongue. In the final steeps the sweet potato fades and is replaced by a sweeter taste that is similar to a yellow musky peach. The cooked tea leaves and tea liquor matched the photos posted.

This one is a winner! Quite a unique experience, and it won’t break the bank.