It seems like I very rarely drink Dragonwell these days, and honestly, I have no clue why that is. Dragonwell has always been one of my favorite Chinese green teas. I guess there are just so many exciting teas out there that I do not spend much time coming back to things that I already know I enjoy. Teas like this remind me that I should revisit the things for which I have an established love. I fell in love with this tea around two or three years ago, reviewed it here on Steepster, and then moved on to other things. I purchased some of the most recent production on a whim earlier in the year and finally got around to working my way through the 50g pouch last week. It’s a still a fantastic tea.
I prepared this tea gongfu style. After the rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose tea leaves in 4 ounces of 176 F water for 5 seconds. This infusion was followed by 15 additional infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 7 seconds, 9 seconds, 12 seconds, 16 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, and 5 minutes.
Prior to the rinse, the dry tea leaves produced aromas of chestnut, zucchini, grass, sugarcane, asparagus, and honey. After the rinse, I detected new aromas of soybean, spinach, seaweed, and toasted corn. The first infusion then introduced aromas of summer squash and cucumber. In the mouth, the tea liquor offered up delicate notes of chestnut, soybean, grass, zucchini, and asparagus that were balanced by hints of spinach, cucumber, honey, and sugarcane. The subsequent infusions introduced a vegetable broth-like umami scent and aromas of coriander, butter, hazelnut, vanilla, lettuce, green olive, and minerals. Stronger and more immediately detectable notes of cucumber and spinach came out in the mouth along with belatedly emerging notes of toasted corn, seaweed, and summer squash. New impressions of minerals, hazelnut, orange zest, oats, vanilla, cream, green olive, lettuce, lemon zest, umami, and orange zest also appeared alongside fleeting coriander hints. As the tea faded, the liquor emphasized notes of minerals, grass, butter, umami, cucumber, lettuce, zucchini, toasted corn, and oats that were balanced by hints of spinach, chestnut, seaweed, lemon zest, orange zest, sugarcane, and summer squash.
This was a great and incredibly powerful Dragonwell green tea. Too often, I find that such teas produce a liquor that is overly delicate and subtle, but this one produced a very rich, aromatic, and flavorful tea liquor with consistently wonderful body and texture in the mouth. It was not a stuffy or prissy tea in the slightest. Instead, it was fun, approachable, and a bit loud in the way it came across, but with respectable depth and complexity. This is still one of my favorite green teas of all time.
Flavors: Asparagus, Butter, Chestnut, Coriander, Cream, Cucumber, Grass, Hazelnut, Honey, Lemon Zest, Lettuce, Mineral, Oats, Olives, Orange Zest, Seaweed, Soybean, Spinach, Sugarcane, Umami, Vanilla, Vegetal, Zucchini
