June 01, 2006

2 New Oolong Blends

The world of Oolong...is it black? Is it green? It can be light, it can be dark...I find the world of oolong to be inherently alluring and mysterious. Yet, I realized that I had never blended with oolongs.

Well, I buried myself in my labratory...errr, I mean...kitchen and after some experimentation, I have discovered two delicious blends that I am quite enthralled with. Feedback has been so far so good (I am fortunate to have friends who like tea, or they do now anyway as I need someone other than myself to offer an opinion). Both blends are wildly different.

The first blend I call Pretty Monkey because it is based on a monkey-picked oolong and is softly blended with an array of flowers, which compliment this grassier oolong tea. I think it's important to not lose the taste of the tea, and especially with a lighter oolong, that is very easy to do. This tea is a mighty expensive tea to blend, as I used some of my personal stash of high end tea, but it did make for a great blend, so I'm happy. Taking tea to the gourmet level....

The second is called Aloha! and is a tropically-inspired wuyi-based oolong. I'm well-aware that the "tropical" blend is a common idea and just about every company has one, but let's face it, especially in the summertime, we all wish we were sipping pina coladas in Hawaii, but we're not, so we dress up our tea blends, wear flip-flops and listen to Jimmy Buffett (or at least I do). The blend I did was a revamp of a similar tropical blend I did last summer, only I've learned more about blending in the past year and I finally have a tropical blend that I'm really pleased with.

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