Taiwan Jin Xuan Milk Oolong Tea

Hmm… Teavivre suggests brewing this at 212º, but after making a pot I’m thinking that was much too high. I can’t detect any creaminess and there is a bitterness that isn’t usually apparent in milk oolongs. It’s nice and floral with a light sweetness, but no milkiness to be found. The bitter hits the back of your tongue and really lingers. It’s not very pleasant.
I’ll hold off rating it until I can try it at a lower temperature.

I missed my mid-day green tea feeding, so I figured that I could make up for lost time with a greenish oolong. My choice: Teavivre’s Jin Xuan Milk Oolong.

The liquor is indeed green—more green than yellow—and the taste smooth and satisfying. Looking forward to two more batches later today…

Method was gongfu with 4oz gaiwan. 5 second rinse. Steeping intervals of 5, 10, 15, 30, 45, 60. The dry leaf aroma is floral and milky. (Aside: The milk brought me back maybe a decade ago to when I was at a friend’s house and she had made her own popsicles, one being with milk. I didn’t like it and I swapped with her for the coke one.) The wet leaf aroma is buttery and much more floral, and is sensorially evocative of late spring.

The liquor is very pale yellow, full-bodied, and slightly thick and creamy. At the first infusion it’s already bursting with flavor. The milk was totally dominant and too strong, borderline metallic-tasting and artificial, kind of off-putting. It clung to the gums even minutes after I last swallowed.

It gets better following this infusion, though. The milk backs off in the second, allowing the floral note to be more noticeable. 3rd: floral and milk are more balanced. In addition, apricot and mineral notes make an appearance and leave a pleasant aftertaste. 4th: the leaves are completely unrolled and the flavors are milder, though the milk is strongest but not so overpowering. 5th: even more milder, and the texture becomes thicker. Lastly, 6th: the floral note is supreme, and the liquor is sweet like maple sugar and candied flowers.

A complicated one. I might have to lower the temperature a little for the sake of the milk flavor. I appreciate the aromas, but I’m divided by the taste. The rating reflects overall quality, a balance of likes and dislikes.

Ok, I ordered from Teavivre like 225 years ago and I still haven’t tried a single one. What is WRONG with me?

Tonight is the night and this is my first pick. It is very soft with a velvety texture. The scent is floral, but the taste is not. As soon as it hits my tongue, it is almost salty, and when that saltiness starts to tone down, I meet the beautifully smooth taste of cream, with a barely there vegetal je-ne-sais-quoi. I can’t remember the last time I had a straight oolong and I feel like I’ve been punishing myself or something. Oolong is so GOOD! I should have it more often. Why don’t I have it more often? Oh yeah, I’m too lazy to check my water temp ha.

Method: 1.5 tsp, 8 oz, 208 degrees, 3 minutes and 8 minutes, brew in mug strainer

Dry Leaf And Brewing Aroma: milky and buttery with a little hint of floral

Flavor: this tea is very light and “green”. I sipped it a bit and found the flavors to be pleasant, but quiet. I put the strainer back in and steeped to 8 minutes. The flavor is more present, but I could still use a little more, personally. Next time I’ll use more tea. This isn’t super creamy, but it has a nice milky flavor and has a hint of butter. I can taste some very mild florals as well. On some sips, I even pick up a slight roasty taste. This wasn’t my favorite of the TeaVivre samples, but I like it enough to drink more. :)

This was my first milk oolong. Not going to lie, I was a bit skeptical at being able to taste a natural milk flavor… but wow. The creamy milky flavor is indisputable. mmmm^.^ Yes, this is a lovely, milky tea. There was a bit of floral and vegetal taste but it was only a shadow to the creamy buttery goodness. Halfway through the cup, I had to break out a bowl of Cheerios because the milky flavor was too good to resist. This tea is wonderful.

This was my final sample from Teavivre! And thank you so much for advancing my tea education^.^..an order will definitely be coming through in the near future.

I received a free sample pack of this tea and brewed it all up in one go . My general impression is that this is a bare bones, high quality light green oolong tea. That is good because I think it’s very easy to appreciate the round, almost creamy taste that is also easier to get right in comparison with green tea, with its risks of harsh or bitter notes. At times I got a sense of a really interesting milky taste and feel of this tea, but overall it was quite subtle.

I very much prefer this subtlety in comparison with a flavored milk oolong tea though. I love to appreciate the beauty of the tea leaf itself in conjunction with the tea maker’s skill In producing these wonderfully tasty and interesting teas. Adding milk aroma, in my mind, impedes this feeling of appreciating the tea and its culture.

What I miss with this tea is some more complex floral or sweet notes. I recently sampled Teavivre’s Superfine Taiwan Qing Xiang Dong Ding and Superfine Taiwan Ali Shan Oolong Tea, and those teas are just in another league. The base for this milk oolong is fairly similar and there is certainly a general light oolong feel to all these teas. However, where the other teas really shine is in the added flavors that come out, they have these wonderful floral and sweet aromas that leave me mesmerized. It’s an unfair comparison of course, seeing as this tea is much cheaper. Still, I can’t help but to miss those fantastic teas.

Regardless, I’m sure to buy more of this as a really fine base light oolong tea, and I’m especially curious to use it for brewing ice tea in summer.

Despite the almost identical name, there are huge differences between this and the FLAVORED Taiwan Jin Xuan Milk Oolong. While the flavored one veers strongly into sweet cream, this one is very vegetal, smooth and buttery, a little sweet but not much. They’re both great. I requested a sample of this so that I could figure out which I liked better, but now I see I’m going to need both.

Creamy, slightly sweet, floral goodness. It’s so good. Ugh. Just. I love it. So much. Drink it.

I have been sipping on this all day. I didn’t write down my thoughts on the individual steeps, but my overall thought is this is some mighty tasty tea. It’s creamy with the buttery smoothness of a good Oolong. There is also an orchid note that is usually present at the end of the sip, but in one or two steeps it was missing entirely. I do pick up more of the grassy flavor as the tea cools. I really like the grassy/milky combination. Very soothing.