Kimberley's Kyusu

Hey there Teacups! I’m back today with another Let’s Talk Tea post and this time around I’m going to be reviewing The Lichfield Tea Companies – Maple & Walnut Oolong. The team at The Lichfield Tea Company very kindly sent me a selection of their blends to review and when I unboxed them over on my Instagram story I asked you all which I should try first and quite a lot of you went for this bled which I was very happy about because out of all the blends they sent this is the one I was the most intrigued about as well.

As you all know I’m a huge fan of Oolong based blends especially ones that use heavily oxidised oolongs like this one does. So when I was asked which of their blends I would like to try from their website this one was at the very top of my list.  I simply couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try it, it sounded absolutely delicious just from it’s description alone. I deffinelty would have regretted passing up the opportunity to feature this in this series.

Here’s what The Lichfield Tea Company have to say about this blend over on their website: ”The beautiful Oolong tea base has been enhanced with the flavours of sweet, Canadian maple syrup and crunchy walnuts.”

Ingredients: Green tea (80 %), walnuts, brittle pieces (sugar, hazelnuts, invert sugar), almond pieces, flavouring

Tea Tasting Notes

For this tasting session I tried this two ways: On its own (hot) and with just honey (hot), I didn’t bothered trying this with milk as I never drink oolong with milk and honestly oolong never does well with the addition of milk it drowns all of its best elements out and I didn’t want to waste any of this tea trying something that I knew wasn’t going to work. In its dry form this blend give off a very sweet maple aroma with a hit of toasted oats and an ever so slight nutty underpinning.. in short it smelt delicious. While all of those notes were a lot strong than I though they would be in the aroma I was still able to pick out the oolong and non of the other additional notes smelt artificial.

The cup of this I had on its own was amazing the oolong is deffinelty the star providing a delicious light woody base and a subtle caramel like underpinning. I was worried that the almond and the walnut wouldn’t come through at all with how strong and sweet the maple note was in the aroma of this blend but they deffinelty do stand out and pair beautifully with the maple. I’m not sure what it about this blend but it tastes exactly like chocolate caramel hobnob biscuits and has a toasted oat note to it that is to die for. This really is such a treat and for me it was perfect on it’s own but I wanted to try it with honey just to see how it would chance this blend and if it would make any of it subtler elements stand out a little more.

What actually happened was the complete opposite and the honey made this so incredibly sweet  that I almost couldn’t finish drinking it. It throws it off balance completely and overpowers the subtler notes of the oolong and takes that toasted oat note that I loved so much away. Its quite a naturally sweet blend and really didn’t need the addition of the and added sweetness at all and I think had I tried to add milk to this all I would have been was disappointed. This is a shining star on its own and doesn’t need absolutely anything additional added to it. Its well balanced and well thought out and if you love sweet treats like I do you should deffinelty give it a try.

I have a few more tea & tisanes to try for this series and I think this one had deffinelty set the bar high for them in terms of my expectations. Though if they are all going to be just as amazing as this one is I am in for so many treats over the next few weeks/months  and I can not wait.

Overall Teacup Rating: 5/5

If you want to find out more about The Lichfield Tea Company and purchase some of this blend for yourself, you can do both here. As always if you have any questions either stick them in the comments or send them to me on Twitter/Instagram @teaisawishblog and I’ll answer them all as soon as I possibly can.

Speak to you all again soon. Happy Steeping – Kimberley

*The tea featured in this post was gifted to me for the purpose of this the review. All opinions are my own and have not been paid for*