Black Dragon Pearls

With the weather starting to really change and cool down, and the sun setting earlier each day I’m realizing that I’m going to have a very limited amount of time left where I can have tea outside until summer next year – so I’ve been making more of an effort to get outside for a session on the weekends or right after finishing work for the day on days I’m working from home…

This is something that I haven’t really had in a long time now, but it was that type of afternoon where I was like, “Fuck – we gonna have some outdoor tea time” and I just scrambled to grab teaware, water, and the first black tea sample that I saw.

It was a nice tea – it’s robust and malty, with a sweetness to it that I like from steep to steep. I didn’t find as much nuance in this little mini session as I have in the past, but I did really enjoy myself and that is ultimately what matters!

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CFFXDAOAinU/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnaxmFw9Pjo&ab_channel=glassbeach

First this tea smells M ZING, it definitely has a chocolatey earthy smell. It also tastes wonderfully earthy with just little hints of something a little darker that I can’t quite describe. I love it with a little honey or raw sugar.

Good for a daily drinker through the week. Not special, but doesn’t claim to be- just a decent puer for easy, quick brewing. Brewed grandpa style in 17 oz infuser tumbler.

Very good, if pricey.

I think this might be the last of the teas from a swap with Mastress Alita.

I had been brewing this one grandpa, both in a 10oz mug and a typical paper coffee cup, using 3-4 pearls and 200 to 212F. When brewed in a mug, I could get one good top-off and a second if I was jonesing. The resulting liquor was thick and oily but light in taste with dominant notes of cocoa and leather with faint vanilla, no hint of bitterness and only a slight astringency, perfect for a warming cup before my night classes. The fog at night has been brutal lately. I love it.

This morning, I finished off the sample by brewing western and paying a little more attention. 4 pearls, 8oz, 212F, 3 steeps at 3/5/? min. The dry leaf had scents of cocoa, sweet potato, leather, spice and orange. The brewed liquor was fragrant with cedar, leather, smoke, oak, faint malt and orange. Surprisingly, the cocoa I tasted when brewed grandpa didn’t show up for me brewed western. It tasted mostly of leather, orange, cedar, mineral and a complementary smokiness. The astringency was a little more pronounced, the mouthfeel was thinner but the tea still produced a long-lasting oily slickness on the tongue.

I love the convenience and versatility of this tea and the change in palate when brewed grandpa vs western. For me, though, it’s missing a bit of depth. Still a good tea regardless and definitely a great tea for no fuss, on the go brewing.

Thanks again, Mastress Alita :)

June Wedding! Something old! I got these last summer in a sampler size with an Adagio order, and can’t even remember what prompted me to decide to try them. But I’m certainly glad I did. I think this is one of the better teas I’ve ever tried from Adagio, and I think since then I’ve restocked this tea from a different vendor, but have yet to break into that stash until I manage to sipdown this sampler.

This tea is just so smooth and malty, while retaining a really sweet finish; it doesn’t have the harsh bitterness or astringency that I’d grown used to with Indian teas, and I think this is the tea that really sold me on wanting to explore more Chinese blacks. It just had a flavor that really clicked with me. I get notes of malt, baked bread, a very subtle hint of apricot, and a honey sweetness toward the end of the sip, and it goes down very smooth.

So good!

This review will probably end up being a little unique among my most recent reviews. For one thing, I have not reviewed anything from Adagio Teas in a long time. For another, this is the first negative review I have posted in a considerable amount of time. I generally do not like to post negative reviews and tend to steer clear of things I dislike, but at the time I purchased this tea (not all that long ago), I had no clue I would react to it the way I did. I mean, I love Yunnan black teas, so how would I have known I would not care for this one?

I prepared this tea gongfu style. For this session, I went with a fairly thin-walled 5 ounce easy gaiwan with a relatively slow pour. After a quick rinse, I steeped just over 7 grams of dragon pearls in 5 ounces of 212 F water for 10 seconds. This infusion was chased by 11 additional infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, and 3 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, I caught aromas of cedar, toast, and malt from the dry dragon pearls. After the rinse, I began to pick up roasted nuts, vanilla, pine, and chocolate on the nose. The bouquet after the first proper infusion was virtually identical. In the mouth, I found subdued notes of cream, malt, chocolate, toast, and cedar. Subsequent infusions brought the cream out on the nose and flavors of pine, roasted nuts, and vanilla out in the mouth. At times, I also picked up caramel, orange, raisin, plum, smoke, leather, and minerals. The tea washed out quickly. It had very little staying power. By the end of the session, I was mostly just picking up a wash of pine, minerals, malt, cream, and toast, occasionally with a touch of very vague lingering fruitiness.

While I used to like Adagio Teas quite a bit and will likely always hold a place in my heart for several of their offerings (Adagio Teas introduced me to the wonderful world of loose leaf tea as a teenager), I have been far from thrilled with the last couple of teas I have tried from them. This tea, in particular, was a disappointment for me. While using a bit more leaf and a different vessel may have boosted this tea’s longevity somewhat, its strangely slick, thin body and its almost soapy texture would have still been off-putting for me. Furthermore, I am willing to bet that its aromas and flavors would still be sorely lacking in depth. I know I’m being very hard on this tea, but it struck me as being somewhat off at the start of the session and it only got worse from there. I would even venture to say that something about it struck me as artificial. There was something of a chemical, detergent-like edge to its smokiness and cedary, piney qualities that really struck me as odd. All in all, I was just not a fan of this tea in the least.

A delicious, strong tea with malty undertones and a rich cocoa scent. I used 4 pearls since my standard cup is a 16oz. cup that I fill up with approx 14oz. of water.

My head is killing me, but MY GOSH this is good.

A whirlwind day today, in the office in the morn, then dashed off to London to interview the cast and writers of the film Bill, from the people who brought you quality things like Horrible Histories and Yonderland. Such lovely people and I hope they do very very well indeed. I want to be their friends. :3

Then stopped off at the Japan Centre to stock up on Crunky biscuits and dorayaki. NOMS. Good day, but the shifting air pressure out there is killing me!

As for the tea, yes. Yes yes yes, yes. I love a good dragon pearl, and this one’s got lovely soft cocoa notes and it’s smooth as heck. There’s a bit of honey and malt in there too. It’s the kind of tea I like to drink when I drink plain black tea, really. Perfect.

Also, my husband bought me a Soup Dragon figurine to go with the Small Clanger I’m knitting. :’) I love Soup Dragon so much.

The dry leaves do smell of cocoa. I got this in a mystery box from Oolong Owl, there were six balls that weighed 4g, so I put them all in my little cast iron pot with about 9oz of just about boiling water and let them steep for four minutes. Wet leaves still smell of cocoa. The brew is very dark, like coffee. The taste is hard to define, but it’s nice. I expected a bitter brew, but it wasn’t bitter at all. The flavor has the faintest bit of cocoa to it, and malt. I am terrible at finding flavors in tea, so all I can say is that this is a nice, smooth cup of black tea that I like and I would consider purchasing in the future. This could definitely go into my morning rotation.

EDIT: Just for the heck of it, I decided to give the leaves another go, and steeped again for about five minutes. The second brew was just as dark and fragrant as the first, but the flavor was what I imagine bongwater tastes like. So I’m not going to do that again.