iTeaWorld – Dahongpao, Minnan Narcissus, Fenghuang Dancong, Tie Guanyin
I promised you this Oolong review weeks ago but I got all distracted and you’ve probably been on tenterhooks waiting for it. But now, happily, I can put you all out of your misery and tell you what I thought of iTeaWorld’s Oolong tea selection.
This tea was very kindly gifted to me by iTeaWorld who probably thought they were going to get a much more thorough review than what I’m actually going to write.
I was a little trepidatious trying four different Oolong teas all in one go. “Won’t they be all much of a muchness?” I wondered. “How on earth will I think of something different to say about each one?”
Well, I needn’t have worried. This is Oolong, we’re talking about, it runs the full gamut from black to green with a few interesting diversions along the way. It’s like the miscellaneous category of tea. The misc-oolong-aneous, if you will. (That bit of wordplay doesn’t work in the slightest, but I am still going to leave it in.)
The four teas I tried were (in order of darkest to lightest): Dahongpao, Minnan Narcissus, Fenghuang Dancong and Tie Guanyin.
Dahongpao, the darkest of the bunch has a sweetness and a whoomph of flavour that reminded me of cherries and lychee. Alongside the sweetness, there is underlying bitterness to this blend but in a nice way. It tastes a bit like almond or nibbling on apple pips. (Although I seem to recall that apple pips contain cyanide so probably not the best comparison to make.) This was probably my favourite of the bunch. It’s certainly in the top three.
Minnan Narcissus was the only member of the gang that didn’t wow me. It’s not a bad tea by any stretch of the imagination but it doesn’t have the whole bung-a-whole-handful-of-jelly-bellies-into-your-mouth-in-one-go-and-see-what happens vibe of the other three.
Fenghuang Dancong is an interesting combination of flavours. At first sip, it seemed a bit seaweedy but then the plummy fruity flavours kicked in. It reminded me a bit of sour plums. There was certainly a lot going on here. I want to try resteeping this one a bunch of times and see how it evolves.
Tie Guanyin is the lightest Oolong here. All the teas were brewed for the same length of time but this one came out the colour of a pale green tea. This one definitely has a more floral vibe than the others; it’s a nice bouquet of fragrant floweriness. What really struck me about this tea was how smooth and creamy it was. It’s like a green-tea-flavoured milkshake.
Like its black tea equivalent, iTeaWorld’s Oolong tea selection is a collection of exceptionally good quality pure-leaf tea. It has clearly been produced by people who take their tea incredibly seriously. Trying these four blends – with their completely different profiles and flavours – felt like going on a tea-based adventure.
Today’s featured book is The Story of China: A Portrait of a Civilisation and its People by Michael Wood.
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