Organic Concubine Oolong from Tea Masters Blog

Now this, I think, at the third steeping, is what Monday mornings should always feel like! No work to get to, the child to hustle out of bed, for it's Labor Day here in the States, and everyone except me is still asleep. I awoke with a hankering to open a shiny silver package from Tea Masters Blog, and so I set my Bonavita to 205f, and took a good look at the Organic Concubine Oolong label while I waited for the water to ready itself. The origin is Feng Huang, Taiwan. This is a winter harvest 2014 and in fact the date of harvest is shown as November 14th. Why do I like knowing that? It isn't as if I am yet aware of the differences between Winter and Summer teas, much less understand any subtleties to be pondered regarding picking date of the leaves! Yet I do love it, and I do wonder and I do want to know more, and I know I will indeed, over the years ahead of me be doing just that, so I rejoice that Tea Masters Blog gives me such information, even though I do not yet understand it's value.
(Two addendum here I heartily desire to make. One is I find it presumptuous and against my Buddhist life-views to assume I will be around tomorrow, much less in the years to come to enjoy and learn about tea, or anything else. Call me a philosophical pessimist if you must but I live like today could be the last day, which is why I enjoy each sip of tea the way I do. Secondly, it may very well be that once I am a more seasoned tea connoisseur I will learn that knowing the harvest date means nothing at all, and that I was silly to think the information might somehow matter in the least, aside from knowing what season the leaves were picked.)

This tea comes out of the package like happy sprightly, little living balls, practically springing into my hands and the awaiting vessel to be weighed. They are adorable, I am sorry, but it is just so! They also show their liveliness by opening up so quickly after the first bath!
They are rolled, medium roasted, and I guess highly oxidized leaves that smell of toast and remind me, oddly enough of my favorite tea, Summer Oriental Beauty. I don't know why, don't care. I am not that kind of tea-drinker, I am just loving it and leaving questions for others to ponder should their experiences mirror my own at any point.
The color is a lovely orange, and then dark gold, and as I stated in the first paragraph of this note, steep three is where I get the real heady buzz and all over body sensation that let's me know I am, as my Buddhist nun friends laughingly call me out on, "Blissing Out! Come see! Hannah is 'blissing out' again!" 
And that's cool, as the Lebowski-ist within me says. Nothing wrong with a little bliss. Before this Californian day gets too hot I am taking my sweet concubine outside to watch the bees buzz and the birds swoop and the flies fly.... See ya around. 

Bliss.