Organic Superfine Dragon Well Long Jing Green Tea

Time for my green tea after dinner tea plan! Since my white Silver Needle Jasmine tasted better with more leaf, I decided to put in about a teaspoon more leaf than I normally do.

Whoah! It smells green and buttery right from the get-go this time. I don’t even need to get close to my mug to get the yummy buttery smell. I steeped this for two minutes. I am finally getting the butter note that I have missed from my first dragonwell. Then the green tea flavor comes charging in and enveloping my mouth with its wonderful taste. The liquor is still very pale even with the extra leaf. This tea isn’t as astringent as my green jasmine pearls which makes for a lovely bedtime tea.

I think I have been under-leafing my french press recently. I will have to pay attention with my other teas to make sure I am getting the leaf-to-water ratio right and get a new teaspoon for measuring.

So I steeped this up and set it on my desk while listening to Emmylou Harris. She is the voice of the angels, or at least I think so. Strange I would think this seeing how most of my music is ’70’s metal (Sabbath, Zeppelin). I found a 5 pack of her early albums today at Walmart. Wow she was really old school country when she started but what a voice. Then I got distracted trying to relearn an old Promise Keepers song our band did years ago that we can’t quite remember how it goes – I refuse to give up. Anyway when I picked the cup up it was almost room temp. Oops! It is buttery, green, and beautiful just the same. And now its gone. Emmylou is still here though ;)

Thanks once again to Angel & Teavivre for this sample.
I put the entire sample into my testtube steeper, & steeped 15/30/oops! I got distracted & let this one go way too long/back to short steeps…lol

Tart & Tangy in a fresh & green way, with an instantly thick mouth, & an rich & resinous quality. The embodiment of spring, I shared steepings with a few students as the day passed. Delicious!

This is an exceptional Dragon Well. I enjoy Dragon Well anyway, but, this one kicks it up a notch. The flavor is so crisp and clean. Vibrant. You can really taste the quality it this.

Sweet and tasting very much like fresh, roasted chestnuts, this tastes like autumn to me. It makes me wish I had a fire going in the fireplace and was roasting chestnuts. YUM! It is a very comforting tea, but at the same time, it offers a sense of invigoration. A truly lovely tea.

Thanks to Teavivre and Angel especially for the sample of this!

Steeped for awhile – probably about 4 minutes, so it’s a bit more grassy than I’d ordinarily like. But it’s a credit to this tea that it’s still perfectly drinkable, just different.

It has such a unique, pure flavor that I’m struggling to describe it with any words other than “Strong Dragonwell.”

Dragonwell is my favorite kind of green tea, though. I haven’t been drinking looseleaf for very long, so most of my teas have been come-and-go. Dragonwell (Teavana variety) is the only one I’ve repurchased over and over.

I trained a girl at work today, because I’m apparently the star cashier. It’s not because I’m particularly good at my job; I’ve just been there longer and I actually do my job, as opposed to some of the boys / high school kids who just kind of stand up there and text the whole time. Training is lovely, but exhausting. We’re busy for BTS anyway, and when I’m training I don’t even have the lull in between customers to myself. But she’s good, and she’s sweet, and I’m hoping she’ll learn quickly and well.

So this tea is really good to just curl up in bed with and watch old DW episodes :)

I’ve mostly been focusing on green teas lately because I prefer them, but I decided to break into the green tea samples I got from teavivre. The taste is like fresh grass and sea-weed combined. The grassy aspect is vibrant and there is a creaminess that saves it from being to much seaweed. I do not pick up on chestnut like some people say they do.

I blame this one today on Kamyria, I read her review and couldn’t help but dig into my own. But, honestly, thank you, this was just the pick me up I needed this morning!

This is seriously my spring in a cup — it makes me think of sunshine, buds, and rainfall. This is roasted chestnuts, notes of buttery artichoke, and a delicate refined sweetness. Everything about this cup screams quality. From the gorgeous, whole unbroken leaves to the richness and depth of flavor in my cup.

Nom.

Dry leaf: The dry leaf smelled a lot different than I expected. I has a much darker and creamier aroma than I expected. The first thing that came to mind was a really light milk oolong. The leaves are very light colored and super flat.

Wet Leaf: At first I thought that this tea smelled like a light sencha, but as I smelled more I found this very bright sweet note. If I had to compare it to something it would be like a buttered pea. It has that creaminess about it, but once you bite into it a dark, sweet, and bright flavor comes out.

Taste: When this tea first hit my tongue there was a crisp vegetal note that didn’t have the sweetness I was expecting. As I began to swallow, however, I got that sweet oolong creaminess. After I swallow this tea is my absolute favorite, because I was left with a very sweet pea flavor running down my throat. It left a refreshed feeling in my mouth and a very smooth feeling in my throat.

Experience buying from Teavivre http://steepster.com/places/2857-teavivre-online—

Note: this review is based on the 2012 harvest.

I received 15 grams of this tea as one of many tea samples provided by Teavivre. Thank you Angel and Teavivre!

This Long Jing Green Tea is advertized as being harvested on March 3, 2012. I brewed this up roughly a week after I received this tea.

Everything about this Dragon Well speaks of its quality: the characteristic appearance and fresh aroma of the both the dry and wet leaf, the movement of the leaves while steeping (more below), and it’s seemingly well-known sweet nutty flavor. As it seems most Long Jings do, this one yielded a mildly green colored liquor.

I started with my standard green tea times and temperatures when steeping (starting at 180F and one minute), and increased the time and temperature up through five steepings. While steeping, the leaves were all on top for 1st and 2nd, half and half on 3rd, such that they were up and active all the way to the 5th; I found the steeping of the leaves enjoyable to watch (with some teas the leaves simply sit on the bottom during the later steepings with little to no activity). I don’t know what all that activity means, but my guess is that movement is an indicator that there is life in the leaves.

I found that the wet leaf had the tell-tale signs of being a quality Long Jing: whole leaves interspersed with plenty of buds and bud sets, all of a uniform army green color. Although it is not the quality of Life in Teacups’s Da Fo Long Jing (the highest quality Long Jing I’ve yet had), this is clearly from a quality pluck.

The flavor was strong, and my wife and I both liked it. Still, as much as I like the taste of a quality Long Jing—and after having a number of them—I am finding that they all have a flavor profile that is not at the top of my list of favorite green teas. It had good flavor up to three steepings and on the forth it had a slight change in flavor that seems to be characteristic of Long Jings, something I don’t quite care for; I don’t know how to describe it, but it may be that it’s too nutty for me. Still, the fifth had an impressive amount of good flavor. With one exception, this is probably the best tasting true Long Jing green tea I have ever had. The price ($20 / 100g) is probably not too bad for an organic Long Jing of this quality, but it’s still too expensive for my tastes; personally, I would rather purchase a less expensive Long Jing. Price aside, this is a Long Jing I would be willing to drink on a regular basis.

I ate too much Halloween treats and I feel gross.

So I am drinking this tea and my tummy is starting to settle down.

This was most likely a free sample from Teavivre. I have a giant box of free Teavivre samples. Angel was so nice to have contacted me a long time ago and invited me to take part in Teavivre’s free tasting activity. Every so often Angel sends me a box filled with samples. She is so awesome!

This is by far the best long jing I have had. It always tastes fresh. Slightly cabbage-y or spinache-y, whatever you want to call it. But it is still smooth and buttery.

My new favorite way of brewing this up is kind of gongfu and kind of western. I put the whole 7g package of tea into a strainer then into a latte type mug (like a 12-16 oz). I brew it up with less than boiling water for maybe 20-30 seconds. I make a few steeps out of it but the first one is always the best.

And now the trick or treaters are here!!! I have to go.

Signing off.