Amethyst Gaba Oolong (Mei Leaf)

I’m sure that it will come as no shock to any of you that I’m writing a tasting sessions post for yet another tea from Mei Leaf. I didn’t plan on this when I last ordered a bunch of samples as I had no idea what to expect from what I had ordered.

I’m sure that it will come as no shock to any of you that I’m writing a tasting sessions post for yet another tea from Mei Leaf. I didn’t plan on this when I last ordered a bunch of samples as I had no idea what to expect from what I had ordered. I had planned to just enjoy them in my own time and not put any stress on myself to write about them. I had decided way before this that I was only going to write posts like this for teas that truly wow me and made me feel inspired to write. I just didn’t expect many of the samples I had ordered to do that but either way I’m glad they did and having that inspiration back has been absolutely wonderful.

This post, as you can see by the title, is all about my initial tasting session with Mei Leaf’s – Amethyst Gaba Oolong. I ordered this because I had previously tried the other two Gaba Oolongs they offer and I wanted to see how it compared to them and I wanted to discover which of the three would be my favourite overall.

Amethyst Gaba is produced from the leaves of Fo Shou Cultivar tea plants. My sample was harvested / produced in spring 2021. It is grown in Alishan, Chiayi, Taiwan, at an elevation of 1300m. The picking standard for this tea is up to the third or fourth leaf.

The dry leaves look just like small dark raisins, they are tightly rolled and black-grey in colour. Once the dry leaves were placed into a warm gaiwan, they had an aroma that was nutty (roasted hazelnuts), with hints of coffee, burning hay, sobacha, bananas caramelized with brown sugar, sandalwood and cardamom. 

After the first steep, the aroma of the wet leaves had notes of cardamom, roasting coffee, burning hay, burning wood, dark roast coffee, freshly laid tarmac and freshly made authentic German caramel. The caramel notes took me straight back to Epcot’s World Showcase and the Karamell-Küche shop, filled with delicious freshly made caramel treats with the smell of the fresh made Werther’s caramel popcorn wafting through the air as you get closer and closer.