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I have been waiting a very long time to try a milk oolong.

I blame this delay on the Steepster Select feature. Just at the point at which I’m considering buying more tea, something awesome gets featured and I find myself set back. Fortunately, this last select had me browsing around thePuriTea’s site, and I gleefully added milk oolong to my order.

I’m into savory teas. Creamy stuff is a weakness, but I don’t often add additives to my tea at all.

Was it worth the wait?

I think so. :)

Opening the bag, it smelled like the candy I enjoyed eating most when I was in Japan — Milky. Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s quite possible to get completely sick of milk candy in a very short period of time, but for that brief time, it is a glorious treat.

Similarly, there is a Brazilian candy that I can’t remember the name of, and it essentially consists of caramel (their caramel is rather different from ours, a bit grainy, a bit milky, and not nearly as sweet) pressed between two very thin wafers of some kind — I mean thin like a communion wafer or something, not like a wafer cookie. Those are also very delicious, and that is also what the aroma of the tea reminds me of — oolong, overlaid with that faint milky sweetness characteristic of both types of candy.

I’m not sure why I don’t connect those types of candy to milk. I never thought Milky tasted like milk, but I could tell you for certain that it was milk candy. Does that make sense? I’m sure it doesn’t, but it’s true.

Yeah. Cup is disappearing with a ferocious swiftness. Milk candy atop oolong floral notes (always gardenia to me, for whatever reason)…slightly caramel-y, but the almost-salty-very-creamy caramel of other countries, not the heavily-sugar-syrup caramel of ours.

This is…delectable. Oh, yes.

I have read — somewhere, I forget where — that some exporting tea companies flavor their milk oolongs (and other teas, like Lapsangs, for instance). I don’t know how one would determine whether or not that has been done to a tea, but I fervently hope that this tea experience is not manufactured. The thought of a plant producing something as sinfully good as what I’m sipping right now is just too lovely, and it would make me sad if it had been mucked-about-with.