Jin Xuan Oolong by Terroir Tea Merchant
I have always found Sunday’s to be perfect tea drinking days. No matter the weather if I were to pick a day that I could guarantee I would want a cup of tea, it would be a Sunday. Living in Southern California I don’t get much choice in weather, so today, like most days, it was rather warm, sunny, no clouds. I know most people like this kind of weather, but it’s really no fun in my opinion. Give me a rainy day any day.
I woke up this Sunday morning with the need to write and have a cup of tea. The later was the easiest of the two. There are just those unfortunate days that the words don’t come as easy and today was one of them. Of course it didn’t stop me from getting some words down, but where I would normally write close to 2,000 words, I was lucky to get 500 today.
Turning to my tea to hopefully pick me up I went back to my April Sipsby box. Since the writing fairy wasn’t with me today I decided to go for something more mild, a medium caffeine. The winner was the Jin Xuan Oolong by Terroir Tea Merchant. It is commonly called the milky oolong and claims to have buttery notes underlying sweet vegetal flavors. It’s origin is Nantou, Taiwan.
It was also fun for me getting to use my new mug I procured from my small trip up to Portland, Oregon. It’s a rather large mug, but portrays the night horizon of Portland. It will probably be one of my favorite mugs from now on.
The instructions are to steep for 3 minutes at 195 degrees. While the tea was brewing I couldn’t help but notice the lack of scent emanating from my mug or the fact that the water barely changed color. For a milky oolong I was expecting a little more cloudiness from my water, but was disappointed to see that wasn’t the case. Still I was undeterred.
When the tea had cooled I quickly sipped wanting to get that fix of tea and despite my worry that the tea wasn’t steeping I was shocked to discover a lovely flavor waiting for me. It wasn’t as strong as my other teas I had tried, but it was there all the same. In fact it was almost a perfect tea for those not sure if they like tea, it was that tame.
But how to find a book that could express everything this tea was frankly, well – not. Even if a book leaves me unsatisfied it will very rarely leave me feeling absolutely nothing. And then it hit me.
I never thought I would end up pairing a tea with this book, frankly I thought my days of bringing it up were well over, but a lass here I stand tea in hand thinking that if I had it to drink some twelve odd years ago when I first cracked the pages of this ill fated story – I would have at least had a tea to enjoy.
I’m not here to rag on any book that gets paired with one of my teas, and in fact if I am being honest Twilight did its best to fill a rather large hole that was left by the end of the Harry Potter series. To take that one in a fan such as myself is no easy feet and I am thankful that Twilight at least tried.
There is no doubt about it though, this pretty basic tea with its subtle aroma and taste fits the bill pretty well with this book. I would say if you are one of the fortunate few who has not yet read this book, but feel you must then I would also suggest brewing this tea along with it. It should make the experience a little more bearable for you.
I kid, a book read is a mind opened no matter what book it happens to be. And if I’m being honest, I would probably would have this tea again. *wink wink*
