Taiwan Monkey Picked (Ma Liu Mie) Tie Guan Yin Oolong Tea

This is a great value for money entry level Tie Guan Yin and one to buy for economical daily drinking. The overall flavour profile of the tea was baked and woody with a noticeable taste of dried fruit, a hint of lemon and sweet potato. The texture of the tea wasn’t overwhelmingly astrigent – it did feel like a typical TGY, but it’s also still rather smooth with the third and fourth steep having a more buttery mouthfeel.

My brewing method was gongfu style at boiling, starting off with 30 seconds and adding 5-10 seconds with each steeping, depending on my preference and how the tea responded to the previous infusion. 30 seconds, give or take, is ideal for the first steeping because these leaves do take time to “wake up” and grow. It’s also great when done western style too imo, for whenever you’re feeling too lazy.

Not bad. The leaves had a slightly charred aroma to them after a rinse, but also sweet caramel and floral notes. The tea started off sweet and vegetal, with a bit of a floral finish that lasted well in my mouth. It’s quite possible I brewed it too hard or too hot, but it developed a bit of a sour note around the third steep that I was not a fan of. The remainder of this will likely go in my box of teas to drink grandpa style. My indifference towards this tea could be in part due to the fact that I’ve been drinking some really nice roasted, rolled oolongs lately, as I felt this one paled in comparison.

I hate saying this, but the first time I had a similar tea was in Teavana. I am proud to say I have never actually bought one ounce of their tea. I am still so VERY ANGRY over them taking away and buying SpecialTeas. I will always hold a grudge against them…ok, rant over.

This tea fits the bill, and I tend to recommend and sway those away from buying it from Teavana. It’s just a lovely Tie Guan Yin oolong. Gives me a lot of extra brews, lovely spring flower flavor, sauteed greens flavor. It’s been my go to for study breaks.

Surprise! This not your usual Tie Guan Yin. As opposed to it’s ususal fresh notes, this one is darker and fruitier.
I was getting honey and dried fruit notes, but would need to spend some more time with this one, as I have around 50g left.
I would recommend this to those who enjoy black teas.

My method:

Tea Tumbler 250 ml, 6g for 10/15/30/45… sec @ 90°C

Gaiwan 100 ml, 3,33g for 10/15/20/30… sec @ 95°C

Flavors: Dried fruit, Honey, Baked Bread

This is a light-roasted Tie Guan Yin. Strong metallic/mineral flavour and not super buttery, more on the fruity and floral side.

Not bad, but I prefer my Premium Tie Guan Yin / Premium Light Roasted TGY from Yunnan Sourcing over this one.

Sweet, roasty, yummy. I like roasted oolongs, but sometimes they get carried away with the roast. It’s nice when other flavors sneak through as they do in this tea. It must be a tieguanyin thing. I’ve only had one other roasted tieguanyin that I can remember and it was sweet too – but more floral sweet where as this one is fruity sweet.

Thank you so much Angel for this free sample. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get to the review.

This is a nice, very lightly roasted oolong. The floral notes are still very present but not overwhelming, and just the right amount of roasty. Not quite sweet, but really flavorful. It lasted through several infusions Western Style.

I really enjoyed this.

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Thanks Teavivre for this free sample!

I steeped this following the brewing guide on the website. The only difference was that I’m using a 4 oz vessel rather than 3 oz. The sample was only 7g so I couldn’t add more to correct the ratio.

I really wanted to like this tea but I couldn’t get it to work for me. The flavor was a bit underwhelming, not really for me. Vegetal, a hint of floral, a really tiny hint of roasted flavor. Next time I’ll increase the steeping times to make up for the discrepancy in water/leaf ratio.

I told my wife what was going on with my neck/shoulder and she came home from work to make me go to emerg. >.< In her defense, though, I probably would have asked her to take me to emerg when she came home at the regular time because nothing is taking the edge off. But the ER doctor said my spine is fine and neurologically I’m fine, so I just need to rest, keep heat on it, and he gave me an Rx for naproxen, which I keep around for my migraines anyway. So….reassuring that it isn’t anything serious, but frustrating because it hurts like hell.

Anyway, so because my wife panics when I’m hurt or sick, she’s home now and we can share a pot of tea, yay! She had the other Tie Guan Yin provided to us by Teavivre last night (she will review soon, I promise!), and it smelled so good that I requested this when we got home from the hospital.

It is so good. I’m not a fan of straight oolongs, but TeaVivre is making me a believer. It’s sweet and roasty and just plain delicious. It’s creamy and vegetal and perfect.

When I was packing up, all in a whirlwind, before catching the plane here, I hectically grabbed a bunch of random Teavivre packets, aiming for the ones I figured I didn’t try yet. Turns out I already did try this one! But no complaints since it’s quite good anyway.

The scent of the dry leaf fools me into thinking that this is going to be monstrously vegetal but luckily isn’t. There’s a fresh floral, yet nutty creaminess here that makes this particular oolong a nice neutral one to grab when you’re not really sure what you want in an oolong at that moment. It’s like a balanced smörgåsbord of various notes.