The “Lion’s Peak Xi Hu Dragon Well” is pretty good and the main inspiration for my contacting Summit Tea. It was a big part of the sampler pack they put together and can be found both on their site and on Amazon (where it is listed as “Superior”).
This tea is not what I would consider “Superior” (at least as described in Wikipedia for Longjing tea) but a decent everyday tea. It offers in taste most of what I’ve come to expect from a reasonable Longjing (somewhat toasty, hint of chestnut), though not quite as pronounced and complex or with the umami mouth feel that I’ve sometimes experienced. No remarkable sweet tones. The liquid color was yellowish with a hint of green. I had to increase the amount of tea to really get the nose and flavors that I prefer.
I brewed it using the tall glass (12oz) method, hotter than recommended at over 180F for 3 minutes, left a root and was able to get 3 infusions out of it before I no longer enjoyed the taste and it became too vegetal. I used aprox 3 rounded teaspoons.
Appearance of the leaves is such an important part of the tall glass method, and part of the joy I find is watching well formed leaves “dance” and drop in the morning sunlight. The leaves for this batch were broken more than I expected and had a few stems intermixed throughout. The dry appearance is reminiscent of what’s shown on the Summit website, but nowhere even remotely near the high quality displayed on their Amazon listing.
From a caffeine standpoint, I found this tea to be a nice balance of alert and lifted, without jacking me up. Unlike some Longjings I’ve tried, this one didn’t act as strongly as a diuretic. Aftertaste was fairly forgetful, though left my palate clean.
At Summit prices, I’ll pass on this and go with some of the values I find at my local retailers.
