To fully catch up on my oolong tasting plan, I’ve got to do a third one today to make up for yesterday and it needs to be a sample. How prescriptive can I possibly be? Certainly not more than that. LOL.
But I’m not going to apologize because when your tea stash is out of control, you need to impose some discipline if there is any hope of ever bringing it to heel. So there.
That said, I am not looking forward to another oolong today. I just had a nearly perfect milk oolong from The O Dor, and I sort of feel as though anything I have will be a come down after that. Which is one of the reasons I choose an ATR sample. Since they’re defunct, I don’t have to be on the lookout for something I’m going to want to reorder. Which somehow takes the sting of disappointment out of the whiffs.
Gaiwan. Rinse. 190F (Zo problems) starting at 15 secs.
This is a vegetal green oolong. Even in the packet, what I smell is vegetables. Asparagus maybe. The tea is pale yellow with a green tinge. The first thing I thought when I smelled the steeped tea was: celery.
How very strange. But yes, I get celery in the flavor as well. You know how celery has a sort of a nutty quality? I think that’s why I get celery — everyone else mentioned nuts.
The second steep has a floral quality; I get gardenias. It may be that I’m still remembering the milk oolong, but while this is an enjoyable tea, it isn’t really up to the task of following that tea. The celery aspect seems to have smoothed away into a more typical nutty flavor. A green nut. I can see why Stephanie said macadamias. I can go there, too.
The third steep tasted a lot like the second to me. There’s a sugary sweet smell to the empty cup. Interestingly, in the fourth steep, I get something that is very sweet. Like brown sugar.
So this certainly gets the prize for variety. Celery to brown sugar in four steeps must be some kind of record, no? It’s kind of funny, the minute I typed that, I realized that the celery note had also re-emerged. So it’s not just celery to brown sugar, but celery and brown sugar together in four steeps.
Just for fun, I did a fifth steep. This is certainly an interesting tea. It has a little something for everyone. I don’t get the toasty notes others have mentioned, and nothing dark or woodsy about this at all. Nor do I get butter, or more than just a small amount of floral. Really, that’s what makes it interesting to me — it is probably the most vegetal of the green oolongs I’ve had.
Flavors: Asparagus, Brown Sugar, Celery, Floral, Gardenias, Nuts, Sugar, Vegetal
