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From the LiquidProust 2017 Regional Oolong Group Buy.

The dry leaves smell sweet and sightly woodsy more like an oak barrel than a forest. I’m excited to try a dark tea from South Korea and immediately brew up 5.5g in my 200ml ceramic kyusu.

The liquor infuses into a very pleasant amber color like Lipton done right. The aroma continues to be subdued, only giving me the same oak like sweet malt I got in the dry leaf. It has a fairly thin body and drys the mouth a bit. The taste is at the same time familiar and unique… It takes me back to sitting around the yellow 60’s dining room set having Tetely with milk and sugar as a young child with my grandmother… but at the same time fits my current much more snobbish palette. The tea is malt forward with a wet not overly assertive cinnamon and a balance of a tannic bite with a oak like smoothness and lasting sweetness.

At the third infusion the malty sweetness turns into a bit of fruity tartness , but turning the water temperature to 200F brought it back into that malty sweet spot. Flavorful for about seven infusions (1.5-1.7L of water) with the last two being several minute brews.

My comparisons to bagged black tea were not made in malice, quite the opposite in fact. I think a lot of tea drinkers would appreciate being catapulted back through memories while still being able to genuinely enjoy this tea. This is not a daily drinker, but rather a tea I would love to curl up with on a cold winter day and just for a little while bask in the warmth of my childhood and my grandmothers embrace, forgetting about the million things that are weighing on my adult mind.

From LiquidProust’s 2017 Regional Oolong Group Buy.

The dry leaf has a very pleasant charcoal and grilled vegetable scent with nice charred looking whole leaves, I brewed it up for breakfast in a 200ml kyusu with 190 degree with 30ish second infusions. The wet leaves smell just like zucchini being grilled over natural wood charcoal next to fresh cut grass, It’s motivating me to get my grill all set up, good thing it’s spring!

The mouth-feel is like a nice consume soup, not overly thick but complementing the roasted vegetable taste very well. The tea leaves a lasting smoothness after I drink, akin to a finely aged scotch. Rose definitely comes through in the aroma and taste, somehow sneaking in past a heavier roast, and a bit of astringency balances it out quite well. This is a Yin-Yang tea, I wouldn’t normally think the flavors would work well together but they do.

The tea lasted through two liters worth of infusions (10 or so) with the last two being longer brewing times with hotter water, and it held it’s flavor well. Gold rose became sweeter with a lighter roast and more mineral notes near the end of the infusions.

I want to explore more Oolongs and come back to this one, as I think I would be able to get more of the nuances.

I received this tea from the regional oolong group buy, and upon opening was struck by the lovely floral and honey scent of the dry leaves. I brewed it in a kyusu 30 seconds at a time and it had a lovely floral aroma that did indeed smell like orchids (one in particular I had smelled at the Denver botanical gardens but cannot remember the name of)

The liquor has the color of a very clear piece of amber, and has a nectar like consistency and taste. Heavy on the sugarcane and flowers. Throughout two liters of water the tea held a good taste that mostly remained the same trading off viscosity for minerality in later steeps and finally quitting after steeping with boiling water for 15 or so minutes.

This tea actually put Nepali Tea Traders on my list of companies I would like to order more tea from.

Pure chocolate heaven! If you have ever made a really good hot chocolate with water then this is spot on. Nice rich thick mouth-feel with a pleasant sweetness that lingers long after the last sip. The undertones I get are very floral, almost like a chocolate rose ice cream.

Looking forward to trying a fresher Jin Jun Mei to compare. I used lower temprature water than I would usually use for a black because of the delicate nature of this tea.

Tastes like a moderate quality Yunnan black tea, it is very good, but not as good as the loose Yunnan blacks I have had. Sweet and smooth with chocolate overtones, gets easily astringent with higher temperatures.

Very good tea, but I would 100% order loose leaf Yunnan black tea over this, the highly compressed cake is a real pain to break apart and I end up turning a lot of it into tea dust.

8g in a 200ml glass teapot with 195 degree F water

The taste is more reminiscent of a good Indian Assam than all of the chocolate heavy Yunnan blacks I have been drinking lately. Malty with a berry jammy quality that I keep going back to. I notice little astringency even with smaller broken bits that I bet would come out with higher temp and longer steep time.

I almost wish it wasn’t in cake form as its compressed tightly and I end up destroying a good bit of it when I break off some for a session.