I bought this tea when I bought my 30 Chinese tea samples, but I’ve just been so busy with those and I never even thought about cracking open the Tieguanyin. But I had some time the past week and thought it was time to finally drink and review it!

From what I can tell, this Tieguanyin was made by a family farm. I’m not too sure about the instructions given on the tin since it said to use boiling water for the first infusion (to be fair, it also said the first steep should be 5s) so I stuck to the way I was taught to make oolongs. In other words, I started with water around 80 degrees.

First impressions

It’s been a while but this certainly looks and smells like a tieguanyin. It’s got a very sweet and seems to be lightly roasted. The leaves are mostly rolled into balls, though I have seen one or two twisted rather than curled. Of more concern is the fact that the tea in both packets (the tin is subdivided into individual packets) I opened so far didn’t have a consistent colour – some leaves looked markedly lighter than the others.

Tasting notes

The first cup gave me a very pale green tea that tastes very sweet and mellow with a lingering aftertaste. I can’t believe it but I’ve forgotten how to describe that distinctive oolong note that comes from lightly roasted tea – starchy? sweet? floral? A mix of all three?

The second cup was more golden green and I could sleep the leaves the minute I lifted the lid of the gaiwan to add more hot water. In terms of taste, this was extremely similar to the first cup but for some reason felt a lot less rich in terms of mouthfeel.

During the third cup, I managed to identify a floral note and the tea seemed a bit sweeter than in the second cup. After this, I felt the tea was quite consistent in how it tasted. I managed to drink six cups before I left and the tin says you can steep the leaves ten times so this makes sense to me.

The spent leaves weren’t very promising, to be honest. The size of the leaves were uneven and I didn’t see the one bud and one leaf or one bud and two leaves, the leaves seem to be all individually separated.

Overall Thoughts

Although I don’t think this will be the highest quality oolong you can find, it does taste good and the price point was reasonable enough that I felt happy with what I got. If you’re just getting into oolongs or need a refresher before buying pricier stuff, this would be a good option.

For more on Tieguanyin, here’s an older post I did about the cultivar itself!