Rare Leaves Black Pearl - Single Estate Taiwanese Dark Roasted Oolong Tea

I recognize the price of this tea isn't for the faint of heart, so I am going VERY in-depth on this review in case it helps someone make a decision. But for a TL;DR:

On first open, the dry tea has a two-note scent of musk at the back of your palate and a delicate fragrance at the front that reminds me of jasmine rice. The taste steeped is markedly different, losing the (very slight) floral fragrance to settle more on the deep roasted notes. It has a buttery, nutty kind of follow-through, like malted barley, and ends on the slightest twinge of a honeyed sweet note. Yes, it is delicious. No, it won't make you or the oolong-hater in your life change their mind about oolong. This tea definitively tastes like oolong. Very good, pristine quality oolong, but still oolong. For anyone else, if you are an oolong lover, I highly recommend splurging on this tea at least once for the experience.

___

I was positively giddy to try this tea. Of "pure" teas, oolong is beaten only by pu'erh, in my opinion, in regards to complexity and synchronicity of flavors. But unlike pu'erh, that complexity won't hit you the very second it passes your lips. Rather, you need to take your time and savor and let the flavors build. This oolong is no different, though the roast definitely comes through immediately and gives the leading flavor for the rest of the notes to follow. After the first few sips, you start to get a lovely buttery-nutty flavor which in turn after another few sips and/or resteeping…

This is the first tea I've drank where my first thought was "am I worthy for this?". I've never encountered a tea with these flavor notes. I was stopped in my tracks with my mind racing, trying to decipher everything my tastes were reporting. The complexity and depth are beyond my palate to understand, especially with how much this tea evolves across re-steeps. That said, I enjoyed this Oolong at every stage and can easily recommend it to a savvy tea drinker.

This product has a daunting price - largely because of the amount of tea packed into the beautiful, CNC aluminum tin. The 150 grams, at August's recommendation of 3.5 grams per 10 ounces of water, yields 43 servings. Throw in 2~4 re-steeps and I think the price becomes justifiable.

I was fortunate to be able to try the Rare Leaves Black Pearl Oolong tea and it is delicious ! It comes in an elegant black glass jar with a screw on glass lid to keep it fresh. The tea itself is very tiny balled black pearls of oolong leaves which expand 10x once you put them in hot water. I carefully weighed out 3.5 grams ( which did not look like very much) on my kitchen scale and steeped it for the recommended 5 minutes. I was amazed at how that tiny bit of tea quickly expanded to easily fill my tea strainer. If possible weigh the amount you are going to use so that you don't end up wither wasting it or changing the flavor by using too much. Although it is a dark roasted oolong the flavor is not smokey but buttery smooth and a full but light and flavorful tea. I reused the same leaves 3x and all 3 times contained the same amount of flavor with the 3rd time adding a slight sweet aftertaste. Although it is an expensive tea you get 5.4 oz and each container will make many, many cups of tea that you can re-steep up to 4x per cup so you are getting a lot of cups of delicious tea for your money. I highly recommend the splurge !!