Green Tea grading
I made a chart that show how different grades of dragon well green tea look like. The grading also apply to most Chinese green tea. I learnt a lot by making it. I hope you find it interesting.
Please, Tell me what you think.
Thank you!)
That is an interesting post. But I don’t drink too much green tea, mostly puerh. I have tried dragon well but don’t know the grade I’ve tried.
As I understand it there are ten grades of Puerh, but that is for size only, not for quality.
For my own study, I would like to make a chart with ripe, raw loose Puerh first before going to the compressed pu-erh. Even it does not always reflex the quality, but it does still tell us buyer roughly of the cost of the raw material.
10 grades of Pu-erh mao cha probably too refine for most people. I would probably simplify the chart to 5 grades, would be easier to see the different on picture and remember.
Just come across this article about grading of loose pu-erh tea.
http://hojotea.com/en/posts-56/
Very interesting article. I know of one vendor that sells loose ripe in all ten grades, Dragon Tea House. But I don’t think they sell the Imperial grade as listed in the article. I think that is also called Gong Ting grade if I am not mistaken.
just check out Dragon Tea House, probably they already have them all graded from the manufacturer. I would guess every factory have thier own standard. But it is very handy to have them all graded.
This is interesting. I pulled out my dragonwell I got on Aliexpress. I think it’s a grade 3 or 4 but hard to tell until I brew it up.
I was looking for taste difference between the grades but that wasn’t there.
I find the taste is difficult to be objective, so I just leave it out.
In general lower grade dragon well is more bitter or has a bitter aftertaste. Higher grade Dragon Well green tea tend to be more sweet, less pungent and most people say it has a creamy green bean like taste.
However I only recognize the taste from the buds and don’t recognized it as green bean taste, possibly chestnut when it is well roasted (because I like roasted Chestnut?)…Lower grade tender to be more roasted, which contribute partly to the bolder flavor.
Maybe somebody can help me out to describe the different between the taste of high grade and low grade dragon well? :)
High grade longjing is much smoother and more delicate; there is a rougher note to the lower grades for sure
Nice picture. I like how you showed the dried and steeped leaf in multiple ways.
Thank you. I am thinking doing one for white tea as well. It already have a pretty clear grading system. rankin from lowest to highest is following… Shou mei – Gao Mu – White peony – Silver needle. But still looking for good reference.
Login or sign up to leave a comment.