Heirloom Tea Company

This is another from Sips By, one I had been putting off. It’s a bad habit of mine — ignoring unflavored whites or oolongs. I know they can be more delicate when it comes to preparation, and that always makes me hesitate.

The leaves are a little glossy and knotted into nuggets. There are also long, thin stems mixed in. They smell sweet and nutty. The package instructions say to give it 90 seconds, so I did, and it came out to a light tan. The leaves had swelled but did not have time to unfurl.

The flavor is a little lighter than I would prefer, so I will probably go with more leaf and maybe 2 minutes instead. Still, it is a smooth and toasty oolong. Much closer to a black tea’s fermentation than a green’s. And it has that creamy note you get with some higher grade oolongs. I do love that. I’ll probably take this as my work tea tomorrow to finish up the sample and get a better taste of it.

Third tea to come in my Sips By April box. This one isn’t in the steepster database yet and I apologize for the lack of picture, I couldn’t figure out how to put one in.

This is apparently an unsmoked lapsang souchong tea, according to the little card I got. It’s an interesting black tea, the dry scent is very minerally and the wet scent and taste is minerally and malty. The tea itself brews up a very light colour and the taste is pretty light as well if you go by their steeping directions of 2 minutes in 195F water, which I did. It steeps at least twice as well, maybe 3 times but I haven’t tried a third steep yet.

A pretty good black tea but not one I’d go out of my way to purchase, I don’t think.

Oh my, this tea is amazing! So smooth and delicious – I love this oolong!