Putting in a Nothing But Tea order for £cough! is definitely something that requires some celebration. It’s always wonderful to spend cough! of any currency on something nice.
Originally the idea this morning was to just resteep last night’s sencha. This is a normal strategy for me because frankly I’m a lazy bugger. Especially in the morning. Sencha, though. Green tea. Cooler water. Right. I think I boiled four times, left it to cool and then forgot about it for the next half hour or so at which point I could start over. Eventually I gave up on this idea. Too expensive in electricity in the long run and not resulting in any tea.
So I thought I still had an untried A&D. Awesome! I put on the kettle, rinsed out the pot and added new leaves and then looked at the tin. Cooler water recommended. This time I left the water to cool and set a timer so that I would remember to actually go and actually make the actual tea.
And result! Here it is! The Mermaid’s Kiss. It only took 1½ hours or something like that to get a cup of tea this morning.
So magnolia eh? I don’t know what that tastes like. I had a magnolia oolong once, back before the dawn of time (and certainly before the dawn of Steepster) that someone I once knew in Tennessee had sent to me. While I can’t remember what it tasted like, I remember being a little saddened when it ran out. I had received I think 50g or so of three or four different things and the magnolia oolong was the one I finished the quickest by far. It’s also the only one of the lot that I can actually remember. I can just remember that they came in dark red foil bags.
It smells floral and it reminds me of jasmine. I can’t tell floral smells apart most of the time, and jasmine is the flower I’m most familiar with in scented tea, so everything ends up smelling like jasmine.
There’s definitely something floral in the flavour as well. A sort of dusty perfume-y sensation on the back of the tongue, which may be simply oolongness or may be magnolia but is likely a combination of the two. Apart from this I can’t really tell a lot about the oolong. There is a fairly large nutty note, but more or less, this seems to be a one note deal.
For me the magnolia seems to have very little flavour on it’s own, but is simply enhancing the oolongness of the tea. It does taste very pleasant, but I’m not sure why I found it to be so memorably. I will happily drink it while I’ve got it, I may even purchase a second set later on, but I don’t really see myself bemoaning the loss all that much when the tin is empty.
