We’re now counting down to the last three teas in the Renegade Taster Set! This is the last green tea – Tulip Garden and here’s the tea description from Renegade Tea:

Tulip Garden’s recipe got an upgrade last year – we tweaked the process to make it more floral and complex and we think we succeeded 🙂  It now has a fresh and floral taste with a nice touch of astringency at the end. A sip of true spring flavours!

First Impressions

The leaves are much curlier than the rest, some of them remind me of a comma. While the leaves look darker than what I expect from a green tea, it does smell pretty floral which bodes well.

Tasting Notes

This is a pretty light tea, so you’ll probably want to steep it longer than normal even if you’re using very little water per steep. The first time I steeped it the way I usually do, the tea was very light and I only tasted weak sweet and nutty notes. During my second session with the tea, I steeped the tea for 2min right off the bat; that produced a tea yellow-green tea liquor that was slightly sweet and nutty. Despite the longer steep and darker colour, it still tasted very light.

The second time I steeped this, I let the tea cool down for a bit and found the taste was slightly stronger. I’m not sure if it’s the heat or if it’s the second steep and the leaves are more open but I did get the same sweet and nutty notes. I say “nutty” but honestly, I had a moment of doubt between “floral” and “nutty”, mostly because I was expecting floral notes. This is another sign that I need to drink more tea to train my tastebuds.

Depending on the session, the third steep (which generally was steeped for three minutes) either had almost no taste or had a strong vegetal taste and no sweetness (a bit like a spent Japanese sencha).

The spent leaves were greener than I expected!

Overall Thoughts

I seem to be getting the lighter teas now – between Berry Breeze and this, I’ve not really had a very robust tea. Personally, I prefer to have something a bit stronger but this could be good for those who prefer not to have to worry about their teas being too strong.