My Verdant spring pre-order finally arrived last week. It’s August now but hey, better late than never. This is a new experimental tea that I’ve been really looking forward to. Never heard of dragonwell black tea before but the name alone intrigued me enough to forego my usual Laoshan Black in lieu of this one.
You wouldn’t be able to tell what kind of tea it was from merely looking at the leaves. There’s really no resemblance to the flat blades of dragonwell green tea. All that processing and oxidation turned it into long, dark strands that look like an ordinary black tea. The leaves have a powerful aroma of molasses and cocoa. I brewed it grandpa style in my 10z glass tumbler, 1.3g of leaf at 200 F. Like most Laoshan blacks, chocolate is the dominant note here. It’s a silky smooth chocolate though with brown sugar, a rich mouthfeel, and no bitterness. Exactly as described in Verdant’s tasting note.
Though I enjoyed this tea, it failed to distinguish itself from Verdant’s other blacks. That’s been my experience with the majority of Laoshan black teas – they taste predominantly of chocolate and not much else. Delicious but one dimensional.
Flavors: Brown Sugar, Chocolate, Cocoa, Licorice, Molasses, Pancake Syrup
