Sainsbury’s Taste The Difference – Oolong
Did you know that Sainsbury’s make their own label Oolong under their slightly fancier ‘Taste the Difference’ label? I was excited to see it. It’s lovely to see supermarkets expanding their tea repertoire, especially with things that actually are tea. Often they just fancy up the tea aisle by clogging the place up with herbal nonsenses.
The tea certainly looks the part. The loose tea comes as small pearls of clustered dried leaves which expand satisfyingly in the pot. However there are two main disappointments here. The first is the actual taste of the stuff and I will expand upon that in a minute. The second disappointment is the fact that Sainsbury’s seem very cagey about telling the tea user where their oolong is actually from. They’re not even going to be pinned down to a country, let alone a region. There’s no mention on the tea packaging and if you check the website, under ‘Country of Origin’, it just says ‘Packed in the United Kingdom’ which isn’t really what I was asking.
I suspect – in the absence of any other information – that this tea is a blend of oolongs from multiple tea estates rather than a single-origin affair. I’m not sure that this is necessarily a bad thing, were it not for my other issue with Sainsbury’s Taste The Difference Oolong: it doesn’t actually taste all that great. It would be a very sorry introduction to oolong for a newcomer. And given that picking up a fancy-looking tea on a whim while doing the supermarket shop, seems like a very likely trying-a-tea-for-the-first-time scenario, that’s a pity.
This tea describes itself as ‘delicate and fragrant’; it is certainly up the green end of the oolong green/black gradient. The problem is, it’s not so much delicate and flowery, it’s more ‘bitter and really tannin-y’. I tried making this tea at varying temperatures and with various steeping times in order to give as fair a chance as possible. The packaging recommended boiling water and then leaving it for 1-2 minutes before steeping. That seemed far too hot to me so I tried making it at eighty degrees the second time. It helped a little but the flavour profile here is still very much “causes the drinker to make an involuntary cat’s-bum-mouth”.
This isn’t snobbery by the way. I have no problem with supermarket own brand teas in general. I’ve sung the praises of Sainsbury’s Earl Grey in the past. They make some very nice teas. But – sadly – this Taste the Difference Oolong isn’t one of them.
Today’s featured book is Tea: A Nerd’s Eye View by Virginia Utermohlen Lovelace MD.
