This morning I’m enjoying another tea from the Jun Chiyabari estate in Nepal. Called Himalayan Oolong, it reminds me very much of a tea I reviewed about a year ago in this post.

The leaves look very much like an Oolong tea, large and rolled, yet there are some differences in the taste, creating a tea, in my opinion, whose flavor notes are a melding of Oolong and Darjeeling. As I said in a previous post, their Himalayan Oolongs are created with a secret process resulting in a black tea with the characteristics of a Silvertip Oolong tea. True Silvertip Oolong teas come from Taiwan (Formosa).

The dry leaf gave off a sweet cookie aroma as I spooned the leaves into my glass teapot. Since they’re so huge, I used 2 teaspoons per cup. I steeped the leaves for 4 minutes at a water temperature of approximately 185 degrees F. Based on my experience several weeks ago, I’m trying a longer steeping time initially. After steeping, I detected a light floral aroma in the wet leaf, a faint whisper of a green Oolong’s (like Spring Dragon) floral characteristic.

As you can see, the tea liquor is a lighter amber color than the Himalayan Oolong I reviewed last year. It’s also lighter-bodied in the cup. The flavor is rich and fruity and quite smooth. I might try steeping for 5 minutes at the lower temp and see what happens.

Isn’t it fun to experiment with your tea and see what happens? Some wonderful surprises and some….well…I guess that didn’t work. But then you know and you go on from there.

Some people like to stick with a tea and try different steeping times until the flavor suits them and others don’t want to be bothered with the “fuss”. One’s not right and one’s not wrong. They’re just different ways of approaching something. I think you can tell which way I am. Which way are you?

“It is the soul’s duty to be loyal to its own desires.  It must abandon itself to its master passion.”  ~Rebecca West