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For a spring project, I decided to compare three Mingqian teas: Bi Luo Chun, Longjing, and Anji Bai Cha. In total, I bought 340 g of green tea, which in hindsight is a lot of green tea. I seriously overestimated how much green tea I would be able and willing to drink, which is why this little experiment is still ongoing. For Part 2 of this three-part extravaganza, I bought four Longjings from Teavivre, Treasure Green, and Seven Cups.

Tea bush: C. sinensis cv. Jiukeng
Location: Qiandao Lake, Chun’an County, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang
Harvest date: March 30, 2024
Price/g: US$0.56

I included this Longjing, which is affordable for a Ming Qian offering, because I’ve enjoyed it in the past. For the comparison session, I steeped 2.4 g of all four teas in 120 ml of 185F water, starting at 4 minutes. This produced very potent, not to say bitter, steeps! I later did a more typical session, steeping 3 g of leaf in 250 ml of 185F water starting at 4 minutes, refilling the cup as needed.

The dry aroma is of green beans, orchids, spring flowers, chestnuts, roast, and butter. The first few rounds are very floral and vegetal, with Chestnuts, orchid, magnolia, green beans, and asparagus. The tea is predictably bitter, with some mouth-puckering effects around my gums. Subsequent steeps feature green beans, chestnut, kale, orchid, spring florals, and other veggies, with the finish being grassy and vegetal.

The bowl steeped tea is a lot more palatable. The first couple steeps have notes of green beans, spinach, asparagus, chestnut, butter, very mild roast, orchids, and grass. The tea has a pronounced but not unpleasant vegetal character and some bitterness. The middle steeps are a bit more nutty, though with plenty of green beans and other veggies and persistent though subtle florality. The final steeps have notes of lettuce, beans, grass, butter, and faint roast.

This is the least roasted and most beany of the four Longjings. Like the Shifeng Longjing from Seven Cups, it’s also quite floral, with nice orchid and spring flower notes. To me, this is the most springlike of the dragonwells, though it’s perhaps not that representative of what a “benchmark” longjing should be.

For a spring project, I decided to compare three Mingqian teas: Bi Luo Chun, Longjing, and Anji Bai Cha. In total, I bought 340 g of green tea, which in hindsight is a lot of green tea. I seriously overestimated how much green tea I would be able and willing to drink, which is why this little experiment is still ongoing. For Part 2 of this three-part extravaganza, I bought four Longjings from Teavivre, Treasure Green, and Seven Cups.

Tea bush: Longjing #43
Location: Xinchang County, Shaoxing City, Zhejiang
Picking date: March 21, 2024
Price/g: US$1.04

As part of this project, I wanted to compare the heirloom Longjing variety with the more prolific Longjing No. 43, which is supposed to have a nuttier, less complex flavour profile. Seven Cups sells both of these teas. For the comparison session, I steeped 2.4 g of all four teas in 120 ml of 185F water, starting at 4 minutes. This produced very potent, not to say bitter, steeps! I later did a more typical session, steeping 3 g of leaf in 250 ml of 185F water starting at 4 minutes, refilling the cup as needed.

The dry aroma of these long, beautiful, mainly unbroken leaves is of chestnuts, butter, roasted grains, green beans, and spinach. The first steeps give me candied chestnuts, hazelnuts, roasted grains, green beans, and asparagus, with some woody bitterness. Did I mention these steeps are potent? Later steeps feature more candied chestnuts, along with beans, other veggies, and slightly bitter roast, with the final steeps being roasty, nutty, buttery, and vegetal.

Bowl style, the first few steeps have notes of roast, chestnut, hazelnut, grain, butter, asparagus, spinach, and faint florals. The tea has a strong vegetal backbone balanced by smooth, nutty, roasty flavours and no bitterness or astringency. The next few steeps give me green beans and a wonderfully round, nutty, buttery, roasted grain profile. The final steeps have notes of butter, nuts, green beans, and lettuce.

If you bowl steep this tea, it will reward you with a nicely roasted, sweet, nutty profile with pleasant beany notes and no bitterness to speak of. The flavours are well integrated enough that it’s hard to pick them apart, and there are absolutely no off notes. Overleafing this tea will yield less pleasant results. This Longjing is well made and deceptively simple.

I’m always up for trying another unsmoked lapsang, so I was excited to see this Hua Xiang Xiao Zhong in Teavivre’s catalogue. I steeped the entire 5 g sample in 120 ml of 195F water for 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

The dry aroma is of peaches, citrus, sweet potato, florals, honey, and malt. The first steep has notes of peach, orange, raspberry, other red berries, sweet potato, honey, orchid, and malt. The tea has a nice, syrupy quality but is a bit drying in the mouth. The next steep is even more peachy, with a lovely peachy aftertaste. Steeps three and four are more malty and woody, but with plenty of peach, honey, berries, orange, and sweet potato. By steeps five and six, the jammy berries are taking over the peach, and the tea has more of those lapsang notes of malt, honey, wood, minerals, and light tannins. The final few steeps have faint hints of fruit, along with malt, wood, honey, tannins, and minerals.

For the price, this is a pretty good lapsang, though I don’t think it compares to the offerings from Wuyi Origin. I’m a fan of the peach and berries, and the tea’s longevity is good. The flavours are lighter than they could be, perhaps because I was using 5 g instead of my usual 6. If you like unsmoked lapsang and are ordering from Teavivre, I’d say this would be a good tea to add to your cart.

Thanks to Teavivre for the sample! I think I’ve tried and enjoyed this tea before, though it’s impossible to find my note in the huge list of reviews. I wish they’d put the most recent ones at the top so we don’t automatically see things written twelve years ago! I steeped 2.5 g of leaf in 250 ml of 185F water for 3 minutes, refilling the cup as needed.

The dry aroma is of chestnuts, butter, artichokes, and green beans. The first steep has notes of chestnut, butter, light roast, artichoke, spinach, and green beans. The next few steeps are sweet and nutty with artichoke and asparagus. The tea is smooth, nutty, and sweet, and the vegetal notes don’t take over until the final steeps. I get green beans, lettuce, and grass at the end of the session.

As expected, this is a much nicer longjing than Teavivre’s basic version. It’s nutty and smooth, without the vegetal bitterness of lower-quality dragonwell. The only thing I miss is the florality that sometimes features in this type of tea.

I received this tea as a free sample in my last order. It seems to be the least expensive longjing in Teavivre’s catalogue, and I don’t think I’ve had it before. I steeped about 2.5 g in 250 ml of 185F water starting at 4 minutes, refilling the cup as necessary.

The dry aroma of these extra-long, sometimes broken leaves is of chestnut, sesame, orchid, and spinach. The first steeps have notes of chestnut, sesame, butter, faint florals, spinach, kale, and green beans. I taste some bitterness that I typically don’t get with higher-quality longjing. Subsequent steeps are buttery, nutty, and vegetal, with cashew, chestnut, sesame, kale, spinach, umami, and beans being prominent. The final steeps have some bitterness, along with lettuce, spinach, nuts, and faint sweetness.

This is a nice entry-level longjing, though there are better ones on the market. I’d recommend this tea if you like nutty longjing and don’t mind a touch of bitterness.

I won this tea in a recent giveaway. Apparently, I’ve written about it before, though I have no memory of drinking it. I didn’t pay as much attention to this tea as I wanted since I was swamped with work and grabbed the first green tea I saw. I steeped 2.5 g in 250 ml of 185F water for 4 minutes, refilling the cup as necessary.

The dry aroma is of asparagus, green beans, lettuce, corn, and grass. The first steeps have notes of corn, spring flowers, butter, asparagus, beans, lettuce, and grass. This tea is quite vegetal, though it has some sweetness. The tea becomes more vegetal in the middle, with asparagus, beans, spinach, lettuce, and butter. The final steeps have notes of spinach, asparagus, and grass, with touches of bitterness.

This green tea is much more vegetal than the ones I’ve been drinking recently. It has a nice brothy quality, but otherwise it tastes like a fresh but generic Chinese green tea, which is not at all a bad thing.

I’ve been curious about Tai Ping Hou Kui for a while, as it’s supposed to be a floral tea. After reading a discussion of it on TeaForum, I finally bought a sample. I followed Teavivre’s instructions and steeped 15 leaves in about 250 ml of 185F water, starting at 4 minutes and refilling as needed.

These long, flat, beautiful leaves stick up above the rim of my cup! The dry aroma is of orchids, pears, and vegetables. The leaves are easy to push into the cup after a few seconds in hot water. The first few steeps are very subtle, with orchid, pear, bok choy, cucumber, green beans, and minerals and no bitterness at all. This tea is quite sweet, with a taste I’d describe as sugary. Predictably, the tea gradually becomes more vegetal, with cucumber, green beans, lettuce, bok choy, zucchini, and minerals. There’s a lingering floral sweetness in the aftertaste. The minerality increases in the final steeps, and the tea becomes even more vegetal without acquiring any bitterness.

This tea is pleasantly floral and sweet, but its subtlety is a bit of a drawback. There’s nothing really wrong with it, and pushing those long leaves into my cup was kind of fun. However, I’d recommend their Mingqian Bi Luo Chun and Longjing over this tea, especially for the price.

Though I’m just reviewing it now, this was the first 2024 harvest tea I drank this spring. It was also my first Meng Ding Huang Ya, though I’ve had good experiences with Huo Shan Huang Ya from Teavivre and Yunnan Craft. It was relatively affordable for a pre-Qingming tea, so into my cart it went. I steeped 4 g of leaf in 120 ml of 175F water for 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 90, 120, 160, 190, and 240 seconds, plus some longer steeps. I also grandpa steeped 3 g in around 250 ml of 175F water, starting at 3 minutes.

The dry aroma is of hazelnuts, toasted corn, green beans, and butter. It suggests that the tea was roasted recently. The first steep is light and silky, with notes of corn, green beans, cucumber, squash, butter, and faint florals. Steep two has stronger notes of beans, corn, hazelnuts, and apple, with some melon in the aftertaste. Its extra strength may be due to three little buds that escaped through my teapot’s filter holes and floated in the cup for about twenty minutes without me noticing! The third and fourth steeps have more spring flowers, plus hazelnut, beans, kale, squash, and grass. I get apple and something herbaceous in the aftertaste. The next few steeps are nutty, buttery, and green, with lots of beans, grass, and kale but not too much bitterness.

Grandpa steeping this tea was a bitter mistake: hazelnuts, corn, kale, beans, and grass, with only hints of the more delicate flavours I get when I gongfu these buds. It tastes a lot like a green tea.

This is a robust yellow tea that can taste a lot like a green. In a teapot, it lacks bitterness and has good longevity. I consider it good value for the price and a nice way to start my spring 2024 tea lineup.

Here’s yet another matcha from my dwindling pile of Nio samples. I steeped the entire 2 g in a mason jar with about 100 ml of cool water.

The dry aroma is of sweet grass and mild veggies. Shaking the contents of the jar produced a good amount of foam, which I view as a minor accomplishment. This matcha is delicately grassy, with notes of cream, seaweed, spinach, and lettuce. Grassiness and umami predominate, though there’s also some sweetness. Bitterness is noticeably absent, which comes as a pleasant surprise.

This matcha is still intense for me, but it’s more enjoyable than some of the other ones I’ve tried. I agree with the vendor that this is a good place to start for matcha beginners like me.

Nio is having a buy two get one free sale prior to May 21, which is International Tea Day. I think there are some other items on sale as well. Take an additional 15% off with the code LEAFHOPPER15 (I get a small commission when someone uses this code).

Daylon generously sent me a humongous box of tea a while ago, and I couldn’t resist cheating on my green tea marathon with some oolong. I steeped 6 g of leaf in 120 ml of 195F water for 25, 20, 25, 30, 30, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

The dry aroma is of orchid, spiced cookies, grass, and faint fruit. The first steep has notes of apple, orchid, narcissus, spiced cookies, butter, and grass. The next steep has a bit of stonefruit along with the apple, nutmeg, and spring flowers. Steeps three and four add custard and some melon. By steep five, the tea starts getting fairly grassy, though there’s still a lot of tangy apple and florals. The final steeps have notes of grass, spinach, and florals.

This tea has an unusual profile for a Da Yu Ling. Maybe my rating is a bit harsh, but I found it to become quite grassy after just a few steeps. I suspect this DYL might be past its prime, but it was still pleasant after all that green tea. Thanks again to Daylon for the box!