Rose Romantique - Oolong Tea 100 g - Café du Jour Loose Tea

An oolong with rose and marigold

Rose Romantique is a loose-leaf oolong tea blended with rose petals and marigold petals, sold in a 100 g pack. It is a fragrant, clearly floral cup, but the tea underneath keeps it from drinking like a perfumed herbal infusion. Café du Jour blends and packs it at its own tea packing house in Maasland, in the Netherlands.

What the oolong brings to it

Oolong is only partly oxidised, which puts it between green tea and black tea. That middle ground is why it works so well under flowers: there is enough body to carry the rose, without the tannin of a strong black tea fighting it. The rose petals give a soft sweetness; the marigold adds a drier, slightly earthy floral note underneath.

Brewing it

This is a loose-leaf tea, so you need a strainer, an infuser basket or a pot with a built-in filter. Use a heaped teaspoon per cup, water just off the boil rather than at a rolling boil, and two to three minutes in the pot. Take the leaves out when the time is up: left sitting, the oolong turns astringent and the rose disappears behind it. The same leaves will take a second steep, lighter but just as fragrant. Drink it without milk.

At a glance

• Type: loose-leaf oolong tea blend
• Ingredients: oolong tea, rose petals, marigold petals
• Net weight: 100 g
• Character: floral and fragrant
• Brewing: a heaped teaspoon per cup, water just off the boil, two to three minutes
• Blended and packed by Café du Jour in Maasland, the Netherlands

The 100 g pack also makes a straightforward tea gift for someone who already brews loose leaf.