Dec 12
Vanessa’s Teaview Snapshot
 | "The flavor, although delicious, was too delicate and evasive. The weak flavor was best characterized as a smoky or roasted nut flavor. "
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Teavana’s Eastern Beauty Oolong is a Formosa oolong so named, according to the Teavana website, because of its beautiful appearance. The dry leaves are not your usual dark green rolled nuggets of oolong, but instead are long, broad, and fairly open leaves of various shades of black, brown and green. In terms of leaf volume, these leaves expanded fairly well during the infusion, so if you are preparing this tea, you’ll want to make sure you have a large enough infusion basket or other such device. I would not recommend using a tea ball or other constricting device for this tea. The aroma coming off this tea was sweet and nutty and very much like your typical “Chinese Restaurant Tea”. The flavor was not very strong, but was a sweet one that was best characterized as a smoky or roasted nut flavor. I really liked the flavor of this tea, but my issue with this tea was that even though I used ample leaves, the tea’s flavor was light-bodied and watery, bordering on bland. In other words, the flavor, although delicious, was too delicate and evasive. I really had to concentrate to taste the flavors in what came off as a very dilute tea. I suppose that I could have used even more leaves, but there comes a point when one must decide between using a large (i.e. expensive) amount of leaves to brew a single cup and seeking an alternate offering of tea. I know I have had many other Formosa oolongs that deliver a similar, yet stronger, flavor using the same or lesser amount or leaves. Teavana’s website doesn’t discuss a second infusion, but I gave it a shot anyway, since almost any oolong will allow for at least two infusions. The second infusion was a bit darker in color; taste-wise it was a subdued version of the already weak first infusion. Had the flavor of this tea been stronger and more easily detectable, I would have written a rave review of this tea. But given that these leaves produced such a mildly flavored liquor, I cannot say that I would recommend this tea, unless you plan to use double the normal amount of leaves per cup. I will note, however, that in a subsequent brewing of (new) leaves, I did infuse the leaves for about 3 minutes longer than I had intened, and because this tea is so mild, it was rather forgiving of my forgetfulness and lacked any bitterness that usually accompanies over-steeped tea.
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