My Recent Batch

If you look under the picture of the tea, you'll notice this time there's a hyperlink. I would have done the same for the previous two teas but the stores no longer have them listed since they're sold out. When it is possible to link you to the tea listed, I will absolutely endeavor to do so.

Today's tea comes from Taiwan. In some of the discussions with other /r/tea members, I've found out that Taiwan is rather infamous for their oolongs. One of the things I like to do when I'm new to a tea region and/or company is try a sampler pack (if they have one). I reached out to Char over at the Oolong Owl and asked for some recommendations.

So here we have the Small Leaf Black tea from Eco-Cha. I purchased their 2021 Holiday Tea sampler, which included the super nifty tea tin pictured to the right. I checked the gongfu brewing instructions on the website, halved the amount of leaves since my container is smaller than 175ml. For my first steep I also did a shorter brew time than recommended. This is because I tend to really enjoy that initial flash brew that is light but bursting with flavor.

This tea, delightfully, is no exception! It's got an almost sweet finish to it with no astringency at all. The flavor is full and smooth. The website describes this as "buttery" and I don't know what that means but this seems like it'd be an excellent milk & sugar black as well. I might have to try that with the rest of the sample. Until next time, cheers!