Thousand Arrows

Tea type
Oolong Tea
Ingredients
Not available
Flavors
Honey, Nutty, White Grapes, White Wine
Sold in
Not available
Caffeine
Not available
Certification
Not available
Edit tea info Last updated by Shanti Tea
Average preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 3 min, 0 sec

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6 Tasting Notes View all

  • “Use 1 tsp. leaf (20 arrows) per cup – the site suggests! Alright…here goes… I’m towards the end of the suggested infusion time length and the leaves haven’t unfurled much which leads me to believe...” Read full tasting note
    86
  • “Brewed a pot of this today – multiple times – and like my previous Shanti Tea experience, it is very good. Following infusion instructions, I counted out 20 little “arrows” of tea, dropped them in...” Read full tasting note
    83
  • “The dry leaf looks so cool! The flavor is rather unique – I don’t think I’ve ever had an Oolong quite like this one. It is delicate but in a very good way. It is a very soothing tea. Very...” Read full tasting note
    88
  • “Visually, this tea reminds me of the Blink Bonnie from the now departed LeafSpa. Definitely a more interesting than usual look. The Blink Bonnie was a green tea and this is a Sri Lankan oolong....” Read full tasting note
    84

From Shanti Tea

A rare, medium-bodied, visually stunning hand-twisted tea.

A rare, visually stunning hand-twisted biodynamic oolong tea from the celebrated Idulgashinna Tea Estate, consisting of 1-2 inch “spears” of green, cinnamon-colored and white leaves. The infusion is curly and very colorful, the liquor light and attractive with a medium body.

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6 Tasting Notes

86
6768 tasting notes

Use 1 tsp. leaf (20 arrows) per cup – the site suggests! Alright…here goes…

I’m towards the end of the suggested infusion time length and the leaves haven’t unfurled much which leads me to believe the claim of multiple infusions is a strong one! That I am looking forward to. If this is anything like Blue Unicorn by Shanti…I am VERY excited!

There isn’t much smell to it dry or once infused but the color is lovely! Cinnamon or Honey colored would probably best describe it!

Flavor-wise I would agree with the medium-strength oolong description and say it reminds me of a toasty-sweet taste with a very slight nutty hint to it.

I will be trying multiple infusions. I think this is good and love the fact that it is different in many ways. I like it very much but not as much as I LOVE their Blue Unicorn! Thousand Arrows is pretty darn good tho!

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83
243 tasting notes

Brewed a pot of this today – multiple times – and like my previous Shanti Tea experience, it is very good. Following infusion instructions, I counted out 20 little “arrows” of tea, dropped them in my basket, boiled some water, allowed it to cool for one minute and then poured it over my tea. I let the tea infuse, hot, no additives for three minutes.

The tea is stunning as described, the little arrows unfurled and showed their green and dark red colors, the aroma is light and crisp, but unmistakably oolong. The liquor is pale yellow. The flavor is clean and crisp, it is mild and medium-bodied, the flavor is oolong, yet not typical oolong. It is almost so faint you cannot even tell that it is actually oolong, yet it is light and sweet and crisp.

Infused two more times with similar results – a clean, delicious oolong tea that can be brewed multiple times with perfectly mirrored results.

Overall this, like my other Shanti Tea (Blue Unicorn) are very light and clean though definitely oolong tea. I enjoyed both of these very much, though as described they flavor is faint and not quite what we have come to know as oolong.

Preparation
3 min, 0 sec
__Morgana__

OMG. First unicorn, then arrows. Topiary tea! Cinoi, I had promised myself no more tea until the end of 2010 or until I can actually fit it all into the cabinet space I have available instead of cardboard cartons on the living room floor, and you have just single handedly pushed me over the brink of having to order from this company, dammit. ;-)

Cinoi

Sorry Morgana, I know how you feel, I am also on a “no more tea till 2011” kick (hence why my posts are lacking, I am drinking a lot of what I already have and have to finish up)…but I have a few more from Shanti if you want to wait it out for reviews…

LENA

MUST HAVE! :) I added it to my shopping list! This sounds…and looks so cool!

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88
4843 tasting notes

The dry leaf looks so cool!

The flavor is rather unique – I don’t think I’ve ever had an Oolong quite like this one. It is delicate but in a very good way. It is a very soothing tea. Very relaxing. I almost want to compare it to a brandy, but I don’t drink alcohol, so I wouldn’t know where to begin with such a comparison. The flavor is so complex and it gently warms and soothes me as I drink it, much like when (on the rare occasion) I imbibe alcohol.

I like this very much. This is one that I could easily drink on a regular basis.

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84
2036 tasting notes

Visually, this tea reminds me of the Blink Bonnie from the now departed LeafSpa. Definitely a more interesting than usual look.

The Blink Bonnie was a green tea and this is a Sri Lankan oolong. Interestingly, Blink Bonnie was also a Sri Lankan tea — it was Indulgashinna as well. It appears that Blink Bonnie may be an estate, but it also appears that Indulgashinna makes more than its share of these twisty leafed teas.

Sri Lankan oolongs generally aren’t among my favorites, but I might have to make an exception for this one — mostly because I just looked on the Shanti site and they don’t have it available anymore.

It would be a shame not to have in my collection a tea that looks like this. It’s just too cool.

In aroma and flavor, this isn’t like the typical green oolong, nor is it like the typical dark. It has a sort of wine-like note to it, but it’s not overly sharp. I am afraid I’m relegated to describing it more by what it is not than by what it is.

Not: floral, orchid, lilac, dairy, butter, milk, toasty, roasty, woody, smoky, stonefruit

The best I can come up with is nutty-honey-grapey-wine. The tea starts out a sort of butter yellow and becomes a darker gold with repeated steepings. I rinsed and steeped in the gaiwan at 195F for 15 seconds and added 5 seconds more each time, for five steeps.

Something to hold onto until it returns to Shanti or another Indulgashinna distributor turns up — but most of its points are attributable to the visual rather than the flavor.

Flavors: Honey, Nutty, White Grapes, White Wine

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C
Leafhopper

Sounds interesting! What-Cha used to carry teas from this estate, though they don’t seem to anymore.

__Morgana__

It is very interesting!

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84
1 tasting notes

This is an incredibly handsome tea with its large rolled spears of leaves. They are beautifully uniform in size and twist and very satisfying to hold in your hand too, I must say. Under the magnifying loop the uniform twist and the glimpses of leaf-bud fuzz is gorgeous, and when I shake out the pack the fuzz (ie: pekoe) indicates the presence of leaf buds.

The sample directions suggest 1tsp of leaf per cup (I’ll guess that’s 5 oz), bringing the water to a boil but letting it cool for a minute and steeping it 2 to 3 minutes with re-infusions. I don’t let the water cool for a full minute since these are tightly rolled leaves and will need some good heat in the water to unfurl them, at least on their first infusion.

I use 88C at 1 minute 10 seconds steep and get a strong golden colour liquor. The liquor’s colour and the wet leaves’s colours indicate this is a medium oxidised oolong. The medium-sized wet leaves, partially or fully unfurled show a uniform, classic bud and two leaves pluck — really lovely to look at. The leaves are a soft coppery brown mixed with a bright green. As I sit tasting and writing I notice that alot of the green is changing to brown as they oxidise while sitting.

The leaves give off a light toasty sweet and vegetal scent with floral and applesauce notes. The liquor has a refreshing light to medium body with very light astringency and its flavour follows the leaf’s aroma and has a pleasing sweet fruity taste note of applesauce, with a toasty finish. On the second steep there is a more forward flavour note of sweet dried fruit, like raisin.

I’m not sure this has the distance that we’ve come to expect from great Chinese oolongs, but there’s still plenty happening in this beautiful looking oolong.

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