Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘High Quality’

Sitting down to review a couple of teas from Kalahari Tea, one from their Energy Tea line and the other from their Chocolatte Red (Rooibos) line. Both teas are bagged but I’m open minded and I have had high quality teas that happened to be prebagged in the past (usually tear them open so I can watch the leaves dance freely -yes, I’m easily amused).

I’ve been wanting to try this tea for awhile and am thrilled to have some in my hands now. The description on the packaging sounds so uplifting- “Ruby Grapefruit White Tea – Fatigue Fighting Brew”.

Opened the packet and studied it a few minutes before deciding against opening the bag. From an outside look, all I could make out was a lot of monochromatic dust, not even any pretty bits of grapefruit. Weird. Checked the ingredients list again and I’d apparently missed the word ‘flavor’ that falls after ‘Natural Grapefruit’. Now I’m not sure what ‘flavor’ means exactly (natural chemical agent number 12321?) but whatever the flavor is, it sure has a nice citrus smell so I’m going to pretend that I think that means they squeezed some grapefruit pulp around the Bai Mu Dan. I love white tea but (obviously) couldn’t discern the quality from an ‘outside of the bag’ look, though I can say that I’ve never seen white tea dust before…

Anyway it really did smell nice so I steeped it for four minutes, anxious for the energy boost. The brew color was really dark compared to other white teas I’ve had (back to the ingredient list), must be the Eleuthro Root darkening things. It held the citrus smell but it wasn’t a ‘crisp’ smell like I’d hoped it would be and it didn’t make me feel energized hmmm. Inhaled the deepest smell I could, still hoping for the citrus zing, but it was flat. It tasted really watery, unsubstantial, zero complexity, but I fought the urge to toss it and let it sit for a few minutes – maybe it just needed to cool.

Right, letting it cool was a horrid idea. I went from zeroness to a chemical aftertaste that lasted through three glasses of milk before I could shake it. From meh to bleh…

Note: we could not find a link to purchase this on the website, but you can see the packaging for the tea here.

I love Tea Forte. Every single tea that I have tried to date has been flavourful, without being overwhelming. I also quite enjoy Oolong Tea. To date, I have mostly focused on the darker, more oxidized Formosa Oolongs, and enjoy the robust flavours that they produce. With that in mind, I reached for the Tea Forte Silk Oolong this morning to give it a try.

First of all, Tea Forte has packaging nailed. The Chest that was sent to us contains the teas nicely, and the pyramid tea bags and wrapping are minimalist enough to let you focus on the tea, while giving you the impression that, even tho this is a teabag, you are about to embark on a high quality tea experience. In the past, I found for the most part the bags give enough room for the teas to expand, so I was not too worried about this here, even tho it is an Oolong that should expand enough to release all the flavours.

I have to say, that this is the first Tea Forte that has disappointed me. Perhaps my expectations were too high going into it. First of all, clearly there was not enough room for the tea to expand in the tea bag. After brewing it at about 195 deg F for about 3 minutes, the tea leaves were straining the confines of the bag. Usually, you can get a nice scent of the tea through the bag, and certainly once it has hit the water, but here, I found the scent to be very muted and almost undetectable.

The tea it’s self is nothing to write home about. It is very light, bordering on almost tasteless. It is certainly smooth as the name “Silk Oolong” implies, but has no interesting aftertaste that lingers, and is overall, unmemorable. Perhaps being used to stronger Oolong infusions I was prepared for a stronger tea, but this certainly is not that. It leaves me feeling indifferent enough to it that I am not even going to bother with a second or third infusion.

Maybe if you steeped it for much longer, you could coax more flavour out of it, or even cutting the leaves out of the bag, buy why do that when you receive it in a bag? You can purchase the loose leaves from Tea Forte directly, but for the price (Tea Forte teas can tend to the expensive side), I don’t see the value on this tea.

Overall, Tea Forte is a fantastic company producing fantastic teas, but in this case, it is one tea that I would remove from the lineup, as it does not seem to fit into the flavourful, memorable teas that I have come to know Tea Forte for.

You can purchase Tea Forte Silk Oolong directly from their website.