99% Oxidized Purple Oolong

Day 8 of Sara’s gift tea advent calendar!

The scent is very mild.

The taste is mild too. It’s a bit earthy, with something… metallic at the end of the sip. There’s a bit of a woody note in there somewhere. The notes are quite balanced. I feel like it’s the kind of tea that could grow on me.

Sipdown. Ashy and sour. I’ve never liked this tea. Only got 2 steeps before I decided it wasn’t worth continuing. It won’t be missed.

Sipdown. This is a good, reliable oolong that I wasn’t expecting to like nearly as much as I do. It’s more earthy and chocolatey than I normally look for in an oolong (or any tea, actually!) but as with my favorite greens it goes with almost any food and has a complex flavor that’s always interesting. It reminds me of a mixture of Yunnan and Da Hong Pao. Mom loves this one too and I would gladly get it again.

From the EU TTB

I’ve been wanting to try this tea for a while now, but I’ve not placed an order with Tealux in a while so it’s not happened. Thanks to the EU TTB, I now finally have the chance! The leaf here is rolled, and does have a dark black/purple appearance. I used 1 tsp of leaf for my cup, and gave it 3 minutes in water cooled to around 180 degrees. The resulting liquor is a medium golden brown, the scent rather charcoal-like.

To taste, I can immediately tell this one’s not for me. It’s very roasty, with that underlying metallic tang that I honestly can’t stand in oolongs. It reminds me of some of my early experiences with oolong, which almost put me off for good. I had hoped I’d get some of the cinnamon/plum notes this one reputedly has, but sadly not.

Still – another one crossed off the “to try” list.

This was on my wishlist, and LiquidProust sent me the perfect sized sample of it! This is thank you #2.

The leaves themselves aren’t purple, but for whatever reason, it comes to mind smelling and tasting it though the color is brown. It’s a lot like polish, or stained wood. I’d maybe guess that the wood would be a cherry wood, because that’s the best guess as to the hidden sweetness. There some creaminess to it, but more in texture than actual taste. This goes for the first steep. To liven it up, I added a little bit of raw sugar, and for me, the cherry and almost coffee berry note were disinterred from the earthy, smoke, woodsy body. Probably wouldn’t be bad with cream, but I’m going for purity right now.

On steep two after four minutes, the tea is significantly smoother, and it’s cherry wood to the fullest. Reminds me of a Halloween fog machine.

Steep three is a lighter version of steep two, but smoother. A little bit smokier to me than the other two, but I tasted some of it earlier in those steeps as well.

In summary, this is a very unusual roasted tea to me. It’s got the same wood and earth character of darker oolongs, but with a cherry polish-the kind you would smell in an old ornate home or hotel.I think the taste should perhaps be close to a 80 in terms of quality, but I had a slightly biased expectation for coffee and sweetness. I expected the fishiness: I had a purple tea before and it tasted exactly like crab. I am really glad that I got to try it, and it is definitely worth trying. Not something I’d ever recommend to a newbie though; more for an adventurous taster.

I will have to admit that having Art of Tea’s purple 99% oolong has pretty much set the standard for what I look for in this type of oolong.
This doesn’t seem to be as potent and therefore is not as fun to steep or drink. The leaf is a bit smaller than I would want and doesn’t expand much, which is a look aspect but it does translate to the somewhat flavor flavor beyond the roasty’ness.

So last week I showed up on Anlina’s doorstep and was like, “hello, I am a random stranger from the internet, can I come in for tea?”. And then, amazingly, I was invited in for tea! It was awesome. :) Browsing Anlina’s tea stash was really fun, and also made me feel better about the size of my own tea stash (I think my local friends think I have lost my mind, lol). And I came home with samples! And now I have a super-cool real-life tea friend, who unfortunately lives 6hrs away from me. In conclusion, tea friends are great and geography sucks.

We shared a pot of this interesting oolong, which was quite good but totally not what I would have expected. With “99% oxidized” in the name, I was expecting one of those dark oolongs that’s practically a black tea. But it tasted more like a roasted green-ish oolong? Like, lots of toasty flavours but the base seemed kinda vegetal to me, in fact it sort of reminded me of genmaicha? Anyway, it was tasty. :)

Thank you so much, cookies! this is not what I would pick for myself as a lover of the lighter side of oolong, but I am happy to have received it!
This tea is so glossy and deep, dark purple. The miniscule rolled leaves are lovely to look at and sniff at. They look like little round eggplants. They kinda smell like roasted eggplant as well. Breaded and broiled in an oven.
The liquor is unmistakably from the purple varietal. It’s a grey-gold thin liquor. I detected some fishy aromas from the cup, but I couldn’t place it in my sip. Ah, but the usual dry, burning prairie grass is there once again.
Next two steeps I used hotter water. From 95C to 100C. I’m getting scalded milk and a deeper roasted flavor. Coffee note abound!! The fishiness intensifies ever so slightly. I am getting faint notes of dark chocolate and caramel. I’m talking 86% dark chocolate. And caramel that is almost burned on the stove. This tea is merciless. It dares me to like it, or to spit it out. I can’t say that I like it, and I am on my 6th steep, and I have finished each sip.
Still. I am glad to have tried it, even though it was definitely not for me.

The dry leaf smells very roasted, and is tightly rolled into small, dark pellets. I want to preface this note by saying that heavily roasted oolongs are generally not my thing, though I do enjoy them on occasion.

Steeped for 2:15 in 90C water. The leaves are just starting to unfurl a bit. The liquor smells roasted and nutty, almost coffee-like, and steeps up to a dark brown with purple undertones.

My first impression of my first sip was NOT GOOD. This sip I tried quite hot and I got smacked with strong roast and mineral notes. Not inherently bad, but it evoked the worst association. The first sip tasted the way outhouse chemicals smell. Dear god. When I’m drinking tea, I do not want to be transported to a well-used port-a-potty.

Fortunately, that first impression was fleeting and did not continue with subsequent sips (yes, I’m stubborn, I continued to sip a tea that made me think of outhouse.) Now that the cup has cooled, the roast and mineral are still there, but they’ve been joined by a creamy nuttiness. Added another 30 seconds of steeping, to get just a bit more flavour into my cup.

This is actually really nice – The roasted flavour doesn’t drown out everything else. If my initial impression hasn’t turned you off completely, worth trying.

With the dry leaves in a warm gaiwan, this purple leaf oolong from Tealux smells very heavily roasted with a hint of vinegar. My only experience with purple leaf tea has been with a Kenyan purple oolong that had a nice plum and berry kind of flavor but was easily over or underbrewed, getting a dirty or bland taste if you went much over or under 170F (I have no idea why this temperature is the sweet spot, but it is the one the vendor recommended and I tried many others to ensure this was the best). The tea was fussy. I also had a purple tips loose leaf raw puer from that same vendor and it had a very heavy woody tastes that was simply not for me.

Not really sure what to expect from this Taiwanese version of purple tea, the smell is priming me for sort of a Wuyi Oolong experience.

The brewed tea has about the same color as the Kenyan purple oolong I had. There’s a slight rosey tint to it. Where most oolongs would be yellowish, orange, or even greenish, this one has more of a peach/pink hint to it from the purple tint of the leaves (caused by high levels of the antioxidant anthocyanin).

The taste is just what I expected from the smell! It is really similar to Sea Dyke brand Shui Xian, a heavily roasted Wuyi oolong you can find for a really low price at Asian grocery stores. There is a great deal of roast flavor along with just a hint of dill. There’s a good deal of char taste like you’d taste on the edges of pan-fried blackened food. It has a bit of a salty finish. If there is any sweetness in this tea it is barely detectible.

Repeated infusions yeilded more of the same flavor, but stronger.

I didn’t find the flavor particularly enjoyable. If you like really roasted flavors you might.