Taiwan Jin Xuan Milk Oolong Tea (Flavored)

I tried this for the first time from the GCTTB, and decided to order some for myself. The milk flavor isn’t as strong as what I remembered, but still good! Been mostly drinking black teas during the cold weather months, but it’s nice to have some “lighter” teas once in a while too.

I ordered samples from Teavivre so I could try this one head-to-head against their unflavoured Jin Xuan. :) I steeped 1tsp (3g) in a 10oz mug with steeping basket – boiling water but I find it cools quite quickly when poured into a mug, so they probably actually steeped at about 90C.

This one definitely has a sweeter, milkier scent to the dry leaf, and the leaves when wet are less vegetal than the unflavoured one. You can still taste the grassy, vegetal base, but there’s an additional sweetness and depth of flavour that wasn’t present in the other one. Interestingly, I don’t find this to be particularly milky, even with the flavouring. It’s definitely less strongly milk-flavoured than other “milk oolongs” I’ve tried, even ones that claimed to be unflavoured. As with the other one, I’m finding this light and pleasant, but also thinking that gong fu might give me a more interesting tasting experience.

Tastes just like tres leches cake. Very strong sweet milk flavor with a bold floral aftertaste. Got a good 10 steeps out of it before the milk flavor dissapated, becoming just a lovely floral light jade oolong

And now it time for the flavoured version of Taiwan Jin Xuan Milk oolong. The smell that comes from the zip bag is oddly familiar. It smells same that that milk oolong that I bought from Forsman. This thing differs from the unflavoured one with the milk flavouring that is sprayed on the leaves, so this is supposed to have stronger milk flavour. At least it smells like milk, bit vinegary like milk or sour milk.
Nuggets of this tea are more even in size compared to the unflavoured milk oolong. Yellow in colour and has milky aroma, but without that osmanthus. Wet tea has more vegetal aroma.
It has quite sweet milk flavour, with hint of vegetality. Milk flavour could be stronger, now it’s about as strong as the unflavoured tea. It’s still pretty good one but my number one in milk oolongs is still from the local tea shop. It has been steamed with goats milk, and that is the stuff.

A sample from KittyLovesTea. I’ve tried Teavivre’s unflavoured Jin Xuan before, and I enjoyed it a lot. It had a natural butteriness that was very pleasant, very smooth, and very easy to drink! I suspect my heart really belongs to flavoured milk oolongs, though, so I was very interested in trying Teavivre’s flavoured version. At last, the time has come!

I used 1 tsp of leaf, and have it 2.5 minutes in boiling water. I felt bad about the water, but that’s what the sachet recommends, so that’s what I did. The resulting liquor is pale yellow gold, and smells of butter and green veg. It’s a scent I’d expect more from a green tea, but there you go.

The first sip reveals a lovely milkiness that almost borders on caramel, which fades into a butteriness by the mid-sip. The vegetal, green-tasting oolong emerges right at the end of the sip, and lingers in the aftertaste. It’s a fresh, almost mineral counterpoint to the sweet, creamy opening flavour.

I like that the flavouring doesn’t drown the oolong completely, and that it complements the oolong’s natural flavour, rather than just covering it up. I’m not sure I would have liked it had it been the first flavoured milk oolong I’d tried, but now I have a little more experience with oolong (milk or otherwise) I can appreciate it for what it is.

This is a tea I wouldn’t mind keeping around. It’ll definitely make it into a future Teavivre order!

I was up all night with a painful tummy and I feel just awful today, so I was in desperate need of some comfort tea. And oh boy is this it. I love this tea. It’s light and flavorful and refreshing and perfect. I am looking forward to spending my day with this perfect tea.

This tea grows on you, or at least it did for me. After my last cup of my first brew, I could really taste the milk flavor, and I think I like it even better with my second pot. It does have that flavor as if you added just a hint of milk to it. It’s a flavor that I like in another one of my other teas as well, though in this tea it feels more natural. I think I will buy this again.

I had too many black teas today, so I needed some oolong. It smells nicely creamy and floral. The flavour is sweet and creamy, but there is a bit of a strong aftertaste. Good, but I prefer the unflavoured Milk Oolong.

I was surprised and, to be honest, a bit skeptical about this flavored milk oolong from Teavivre. Not that I knew anything about milk oolong anyway, but it struck me as strange that an excellent pure tea purveyor such as Teavivre would be trading in those disreputable “flavors” added by so many companies to mask mediocre base teas.

My worries were for naught, as this Jin Xuan tastes very good. However, I am a bit confused, as it tastes, looks, and smells very similar to the Republic of Tea Milk Oolong, which boasts only natural milkiness. Both dried teas take the form of gnarled green knots with a huge amount of very enticing aroma. This Jin Xuan exhibits less variation in the coloring, with a more uniform dark green sheen, and the knots are also smaller in size. The Republic of Tea Milk Oolong came from China, not Taiwan, so I suppose that it should not be taken as “classic”, whereas this milk oolong from Teavivre appears to have come from Taiwan.

The most important question of all is this: how did I go my whole life until yesterday in a state of complete and utter milk oolong ignorance and (now I see) deficiency? This is a wonderful genre of tea, which I definitely intend to explore further, beginning with the unflavored milk oolong from Teavivre!

Thank you to TeaTiff for this tea. I again did this pseudo gong fu cha in my 5oz finum cup, boiling as per the Teavivre site.

TIL that I really don’t like flavored milk oolongs. The milk flavor just tastes like spoiled milk to me. Awful.

But once I got beyond that, a few steeps in, this was decent. I liked the Mandala a lot better. That said, I’m really looking forward to the Gong Fu Tea milk oolong tomorrow.

I did a 5s rinse, and decided to try it since it smelled good. I actually liked it. Really creamy and milky. There was just a little bit of the flavor to it.

The first real steep at 25s was just AWFUL. EEEW. Terrible. I almost dumped it out and the leaves but I decided to drink it (it was only a few ounces) It tastes like sour, nasty milk to me. Just blech.

The second steep was 35s. It still tasted “off” to me, but a lot better than the first.

45s was much better , mostly the off flavor is gone. It tasted a lot more green to me, almost but not quite floral. I noted on this steep how beautiful the color was.

55s was a very nice steep. The off milk flavor is gone. This is still creamy, more floral and just a touch vegetal. I liked the green oolong flavor.

1:05 very nice. Ended very buttery. But nothing spectacular at the same time. Very weird.

1:15 This was my favorite infusion of them all. really creamy and buttery.
1:25 was similar but not as much flavor.

I tried one more steep but it was done by that point.

Yeah, this flavored one is not for me. I would probably have liked the unflavored version of this better, but I can tell it would not be one I would want to stock.