Customer Reviews
I recently ordered a small sample of this tea as a curiosity since I haven't had white tea from Taiwan before, and my oolong preferences skew more towards rock oolong than Taiwanese high elevation oolongs. This tea is a real treat. It arrived well protected so there was minimal breakage. The smell of the dry leaf was intriguing enough, but I was very excited to smell the wet leaf. My first thought was "Christmas". I could detect notes of dried berries, cedar wood, and faint sweet conifer. I was expecting menthol but the taste was more warming than cooling. Definitely a unique tea and one I will bring to share with my tea group.
This tea is very delicate and flavorful! It's one of my very favorite white teas. When brewed a little on the strong side, it gives off some nice fruity notes - definitely not your typical flavor profile for a white tea. I hope this one stays in stock for a long time!
While the ruby 18 notes are not quite as high and pronounced in this one, it is still a delicious offering of the cultivar as a white tea and worth having in your stash. Hints of menthol, eucalyptus, and mint are all flavors that come to mind when trying to describe ruby 18. If you love white teas but have yet to try the 18 cultivar then what are you waiting for? Pick some of this up!
What's not to like about Ruby 18 teas? You like Assam teas, you like Taiwanese teas. Put them in a room together and they have a child named Ruby (18 years later?) I've never seen a white version of this before. Usually Ruby is dark and mysterious. I like dark and mysterious, but they say change is good for the soul.
Pouring it out into my makeshift teapot, it sort of looks like the leaves I just swept out of the yard. But looks are deceiving. Upon brewing, the unmistakeable warm, raisiny, sweet, rich, almost cinnamony scent of the Ruby tea wafts out of the cup. Closing my eyes, I would say this is slightly fruitier than the Rubys I've tried, but I need to make another batch to be sure. This is excellent. I'm trying to figure out what I want to eat with this.