China Jasmine Dragon Pearls Green Tea

2023 Spring Harvest

While I’m trying (and failing) to avoid buying or accumulating new teas right now, it’s been years since I had one my absolute favourite types of tea: Jasmine Pearls (also Dragon Well). And, so, a short while ago I caved suddenly and all at once – buying both.

Green Jasmine Pearls always remind me of late winter turning into early spring. It’s probably the combination of clean and warm notes of grass, honeysuckle, melon, squash, stonefruit, and fresh evergreen. Jasmine is also pleasantly banana-ish to my brain – creamy, vanilla bean-like, and sugar-rum sweet. It’s such a decadent floral flavour.

I can’t get enough of it, although I’m not super picky about where I get it (What-Cha is a reliable go to when I’m craving it though… or Teavivre; I’m surprised I’ve never written up a note for this or the other varieties What-Cha carries! Oh, well). This is also one of my mom’s favourite teas so I should try and do a better job at keeping some around… Such a hardship given how much I love this tea :P

Steep Count: 4 (first steep @ 2min; last steep @ 5min)

H’s note on the pack says, “Tastes like a hug.” It’s more jasmine than tea for me, but none the worse for that. It’s floral and exotic and relaxing all at once. (Spring 2017 harvest)

I devoted most of last week to the continued cleaning out of the fabled sample pile. I get the distinct impression that I will be doing more of the same this week. This is one of my more recent sample sipdowns (yesterday) and I wanted to go ahead and get a review up on Steepster before I forgot about it. Overall, I found this to be a very nice jasmine green tea.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a quick rinse, I steeped 6 grams of dragon pearls in 4 ounces of 176 F water for 10 seconds. This infusion was chased by 13 subsequent infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 12 seconds, 15 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, I found extremely pleasant aromas of jasmine, ripe melon, and grass. After the rinse, I noted stronger jasmine, melon, and grass aromas. The first infusion then brought out hints of vanilla and squash. The liquor initially offered delicate jasmine notes on the entry that gave way to hints of grass, honeydew, nectar, and vanilla. Subsequent infusions brought out slightly stronger notes of jasmine, grass, honeydew, nectar, and vanilla. I also caught new notes of cream, fresh zucchini, straw, sugarcane, minerals, and squash blossom, as well as fleeting, subtle impressions of apricot and white peach in places. The later infusions offered pronounced mineral notes underscored by grass, zucchini, and hints of honeydew and jasmine.

This was one of the most pleasant, consistent jasmine green teas I have tried to this point. It offered a wonderful texture in the mouth and displayed considerably longevity. I do wish, however, that it had been a little stronger and thicker. All nitpicking aside, this was a still a very good tea. I would have no issue with recommending it to fans of floral teas.

Actually, this is my first jasmine scented tea! The dry leaves smelled soooo bright and flowery. I steeped it according to package instructions – 1tsp at 80C for 2.5min. The resulting tea was really flowery. I don’t know what jasmine is suppose to taste like but it reminded me of lychee! I really liked it, but it was slightly overpowering. Maybe I’ll try a shorter brewing time or less leaves next time. I cold-steeped the remains and the resulting brew had a light jasmine taste that was amazing. I will have to try more jasmine-scented tea in the future!