My name is Nicole and I am a mint addict. I also need a twelve step program for oolong. This tea feeds both of my vices. The dry leaves resembled a typical rolled oolong but oddly enough, I didn’t see any peppermint amongst them. I’d be interested to know how they achieved the flavoring. The leaves had a distinct peppermint patty like smell to them. I steeped this tea with my Breville One-Touch Tea Maker using 195 degree water for 3 minutes. The liquor was a pale yellow and had the same strong aroma.
This tea was overwhelmingly mint, so much so that it all but consumed the oolong. The cooling taste lingered after each sip. After three infusions the flavor was just as strong. While I enjoyed this tea I found myself wishing that the oolong was more apparent. That being said it is hard to achieve that in a mint blend, even with a stronger background tea. It did have a creamy texture that can definitely be attributed to the oolong. I would probably recommend this tea.
I wonder if these are scented similarly to how Jasmine, Osmanthus, and some Rose teas are…by setting fresh flavoring in the same space with the leaves, letting the aromas permeate, and then taking them out and replacing them with fresh flavoring (jasmine blossoms, or in this case, mint leaves)…and repeating several times.
This might be trickier to do with mint…maybe the essential oil could be used…or the leaves could be crushed? I don't know because I usually just blend mint leaves in whenever I want to make a flavored mint tea.
It's interesting…I rarely blend peppermint with pure tea, but frequently use spearmints. I can't imagine peppermint blending well with an oolong…it tends to overpower teas. On the other hand, there are a lot of other varieties of mint that I could imagine with an oolong…