12:00 PM (Formerly Peach Oolong)

Thanks you Terri Harp Lady for this sample tea!

Rain, Rain finally Rain! I’m happy it’s here!

I just noticed that the condo entrance median outside has two apple trees filled with small apples that I hope have a chance of becoming something wonderful to eat before the snows this year!
I noticed the bushes have suddenly turned red and overnight,the big tree across the street turned bright yellow-gold.
Because I’m halfway up to the clouds here at 5000 feet, they seem grander and closer to the ground. Huge, billowy, purple blue monster clouds came rolling over the higher Rocky’s with Spielberg-like special effect movement, around 5PM. This has always been exciting to me. I knew what to expect when I saw the clouds forming in the distance earlier, so I rushed to the grocery store so that I wouldn’t have to leave home for a few days. (Milk for Chai was on the top of my list.)
For tonight, I made Peach Oolong for sipping before watching TV. (Revolution, (giving this series a look).

The scent and flavor of this tea were both mild even with a 3 minute steep. I thought sweetening might wake up the peach flavor, but even sweetening didn’t bring it out.
I tasted mild roasted leaf that wasn’t bitter, but it had an odd plywood taste.

Hum. What was the creator of the flavored tea trying to achieve? Possibly not the flavor of the peach but the peach skin. That would explain the mild, dry and woody taste. Could be. To me, there was hardly an oolong taste or peach flavor. Peach skin was the closest.

So, the rain is here. I’m ready with soup and tea in my cupboard! Cool weather is perfect for Chai and looking out the window at big clouds and watching a movie!

Like most this one leaves me wanting more PEACH!
And for that matter more oolong would be nice too.
Its just too delicate of a tea for me but its not bad – just delicate – I am sure for some this is blissful perfection – but I want something a bit more edgy.

Drank some of this last night. It used to be a favorite.
It’s a beautiful looking tea, made from the more roasty oolong that I tend to prefer, but it’s not as peachy or wonderful as I remember it being. Probably cuz it’s been in my cabinet for…awhile…

Backlog:

The peach flavor is a little subtle and that seems strange to me since Oolong tends to have a natural peach-y tone to it. It’s a tasty tea, but I was hoping for more peach!

I was expecting this tea to taste peachier than it actually does. There’s a hint of fruit flavour but I think that comes mostly from the oolong leaves themselves. Mostly it tastes like a fairly typical dark oolong – a mix of bakey and moss/wet bark-like flavours (in case you were wondering, I’ve never actually eaten moss or wet bark, but this tea is what I’d imagine they’d taste like).

This smelled pretty good in the package and looked interesting with little yellow shreds or thin petals (Chrysanthemum perhaps?) and orange bits of what might be dried peach amid the stems and shreds of black. I put a teaspoon in my strainer and gave it a try. When water was applied, it smelled like …um…tea? I’m not much of a tea connoisseur but it had kind of a greenish scent from the leaves—like green vegetables.

When I strained out the liquid, it didn’t smell so green, but it didn’t smell particularly peachy either, or even terribly appetizing. I briefly considered dumping it out and then dismissed the notion, opting to wait for it to cool and find out how it actually tasted. This was a sample from my big sis, Terri Harplady, so I felt obligated to see the experiment through.

No sir, I didn’t like it. Blah blah bland. A few days later I learned that Terri prefers a tablespoon per cup and my previous conservative attempt hadn’t done it justice. I resolved to try again with a stronger brew, though I really wasn’t liking the flavor base of this.

Attempt #2 This time I used a full tablespoon for my standard three minute steep. Once again, it smelled like green vegetables, but the surface of the tea looked…scummy. It tasted like the water left when I cook vegetables, with a slight astringency from the tea, so I pulled out the stops and sweetened it.

Ok, there was the peach, just a hint of it, as well as an undertone of vanilla beneath a kind of funky, gamy vegetable flavor I guessed to be the oolong. I concluded there IS something there, but I don’t have much use for a tea that needs sweetener to be appreciated.

My big sis said she preferred it iced. I decided it was worth a try.

Attempt #3 This time I tried a cold brew. Sometimes a batch of tea brewed slowly in a jar of cold water in the refrigerator will turn out infinitely better. Not this time. No sir, I didn’t like it. Fortunately, I used the last of it up in this attempt.

There’s something in the base of this tea that disagrees with me. Tastes differ, and I don’t doubt that someone else is giving this variety a shining review. I gave it a fair shake but must sadly conclude this is not my cup of tea.

Bleh. The oolong tasted old and stale, and I got absolutely no peach flavour from it. Sad and disappointed.

wonderful. the peachiness is just right, blended behind the tea leaves. truly lovely.

Well, I returned from a lovely vacation only to have the whole thing soured by having my closing date delayed because my initial loan didn’t go through because a sleazy property management company owns over 10% of the units in the condo that I’m purchasing my unit in, which disqualified my loan under their Fannie Mae stipulations, sooooo I get to start all over with the loan process with a different lender. ARGH. I swear this whole house-buying process is going to kill me. And to make matters worse, I had handed in my 30 days notice to my apartment because my loan officer and realtor had told me everything was going absolutely great RIGHT before I left on vacation, so now I only have until the 15th of August to close before I’ll be homeless… the stress is so real.

I have a lot to write up on my Portland tea samplings/Tea Fest PDX, and eventually I’ll get to that. I bought way too much on vacation, and the sad part is I don’t even plan to break into any of it, it’s just going into the moving box. Siiiiiiiigh.

This was an old sampler from Fusion Teas, August Peach Oolong Tea, that I finished off quickly by making a liter of coldbrew tea, and then another half liter of coldbrew tea. Looking up the ingredients, it was easy to hunt down that this blend was sourced by Art of Tea, and is their 12:00PM tea (which was formally called “Peach Oolong”). I never bothered to try the tea warm, since we’ve been in a terrible heatwave (I’m already missing those Oregon coast temperatures!)

This is a toasty tasting oolong base, and the flavor of this tea actually reminds me a lot of Lupicia’s Apricot Mugicha, just a little less coffee-like… and since Lupicia no longer sells any of their flavored Mugicha, I suppose this at least scratches that itch for that particular tea a little. This tea has a nice roasted nuts flavor with some woody notes and the slightly earthy flavor of raw hazelnut/walnuts, with a bit of a honeyed sweetness to it that is really refreshing to me iced. The peach notes are noticable, but come out more of a subtle fruity note that compliments the honey notes and isn’t a distinct flavor that holds out on its own against the strong woody/nutty oolong base.

I like the tea, and I think renaming it to take the emphasis off the peach was the right move, as this doesn’t really read as a “peach-flavored tea” but rather as an oolong that has some peach/stonefruit notes. This makes a nice iced tea for those that enjoy a nice cold mugicha or houjicha.

I only got to drink half of my tin of this tea because of friend begged me (in this case begging is the correct word) to give him the rest. This is brews very pleasant cup of tea that acts as liquid calmness for me. I enjoy the quality of oolong and the taste it provides along with the peach notes that come out in the tea. This was my first Art of Tea product and it caused me to try their other teas. (I ended up drinking about 12 cups of this in case you’re wondering how much was taken from me)