Organic Hangzhou Tian Mu Qing Ding Green Tea

Another big thank you to Angel and Teavivre for sending me a sample of this tea.

What a delightful sample. I was expecting it to be quite light but it actually has a really wonderful aroma and taste! It reminds me of a dragonwell somewhat. There is a sweetness in the aroma of the steeped leaves. It is very juicy in the mouthfeel with a slight peachy floral flavor mixed in with grassy notes and buttery honey notes.

There is a lot going on in this cup! The wet leaves turn out like a dragonwell too but a bit less fluffy and downy.

This is a hardy green too! I got distracted by local news and over steeped this tea in water too hot. I had forgotten I had added water to my Zojirushi and it reboiled so the water on my second steep was at around 208 and then I proceeded to let it steep for at least 3 minutes lol what a mess one would think but nope its still wonderful! A great green for the most “spacey” tea drinkers out there.

I really do like this one. Light, buttery, a little nutty, slightly floral but not too much, with just slight notes of honey and peach.

No one has made any notes about this yet???
First!
I just ordered this as a sample. I opened the little packet and was greeted by a wonderful aroma, it was grassy in a savory way. Like a lawn that was mowed yesterday and today is humid bringing the smell up better. The leaves are long and green.

I brewed this in my 12oz Italian mug. I’m feeling a bit too lazy to do gaiwan style today. The wet leaves turned a beautiful bright green hue and the smell reminded me of a sencha, it was so wonderful. The infusion was very pale with notes of butter.

Taste was fresh and grassy with a floral note, orchid perhaps, and a slight nutty note, chestnut maybe. The texture was silky and creamy yet the tea remained light and fresh. What a wonderful green tea, this is what I like in green teas, this is why I crave them, why I prefer them.

The latest batch of samples courtesy of Angel and Teavivre showed up in my mailbox on Friday, but I didn’t get a chance to try them until after I’d gotten back to school from break.

Break was fantastic, but I’m glad to be back, and trying new teas!

I really like this one. The leaves are bright spinach green, and they smell very vegetal. The taste is also very spinach-y and vegetal, but I like it. It’s kind of like my beloved Dragonwell! Delightful.

This is a free sample provided by Angel and Teavivre. Thank you!

I made this western style tonight to enjoy after supper. Hubby joined me having tea and greens are a bit iffy for him still, being a Tetley-with-milk-and-sugar kind of guy, though that is gradually changing.

The dry leaves had that rich buttery veggie aroma that makes me giddy. I knew this was going to be a treat. I used 194F water and gave the first steep 1min. 30 sec. and the second steep 2 min.

The liquor was a light to medium yellow. The aroma is sweet buttered veggies. The taste is so smooth and sweet. Hubby drank four cups. Not my tiny cups, the medium sized 6 ounce ones! And I had….erp….about six of them.

This resteeped very well. I agree with the person who said that if you like Lung Ching (DragonWell) you will probably Iike this one, I think this is slightly milder, but definitely worth having on hand if you like buttery sweet and smooth green teas.

Thank you, Angel and Teavivre!

I REALLY enjoyed this tea. Very refreshing yet mildly vegetal flavor.

Dry leaves: The dry leaves are a deep green with lots of budsets. They’re rolled into loosely needle-like fashion.

Brewing: Strong vegetable aroma with a slight minty coolness. The tea liquer is extremely clear and green-gold in color. The brewed leaves look healthy and plump, and are largely unbroken.

Tasting: The early infusions are mild and sweet with flavors of cantaloupe and pomelo. The mouthfeel is extremely clean with a slight sparkling quality. As the tea cools it shows a more vegetal side with flavors of green bean and chestnut. Around the third steep, the tea gains a creamier quality with flavors of olive oil, hazelnut, and fig. After the fifth, the tea becomes very light and sweet with crisp flavors of edame and barley.

Thanks Teavivre for this sample!

Thank you Angel and Teavivre for yet another generous sample.

This tea is quite nutty in both aroma and taste. The nuttiness is evident in the first steeping whereas the second steeping brings on a smokier flavor. For the third steeping, I got distracted emailing our real estate agent, and left the leaves in for too long so there was some definite bitterness. I’m sure that this was completely “user error” as my other brews had no bitterness – silly me! This is quite a lovely green tea, but it’s not a must-have for my cupboard. As far as pure green tea goes, it seems as though my preference leans towards Japanese green tea (probably out of familiarity).

My Teavivre samples will likely have a much better chance at winning my heart with their non-green teas (so far their organic silver needle white tea is a definite champ with my taste buds). Perhaps I will give the jasmine sample a try tomorrow. While sorting through my untried teas, I sniff at that jasmine packet like a bloodhound on a hot trail. So hopefully tomorrow will be the morning that I grab that pack out of my bag of goodies while I’m practicing my half-asleep morning tea making ritual…I’m rooting for it!

Thank you TeaVivre for this FANTASTIC sample!

Oh my goodness this tea is exquisite! The dry smell is of a buttery green bean with a silky smoothness added to it. I can’t wait to brew this up!

Brewed this tastes exactly like it smells. Of a deep, rich green bean with a smooth and silky butteriness. I am absolutely in love with this tea. Absolutely in love with it. I’ll have to order some of this because it is just amazing.

Overall this tea is an extremely vegetal beautiful tea with a buttery flavor to accompany it. I highly recommend it!

This is another sample sent to me by Angel and Teavire for review.

I’m not sure I enjoy green tea as much as blacks or oolongs, but this is pretty good. If I was a green tea lover, this is one I’d keep stocked up on. It’s creamy and smooth in texture. The strongest flavor I get is butter and some thing much like spinach. A floral sweetness shows up next. It’s not perfume-y or soapy. It reminds me of smelling fresh flowers growing in the neighbor’s yard. I guess it’s not powerfully floral. It really has a quite a sweet after taste. Not a bad cup at all. :D

What a name. This is another sample provided by Teavivre. I opened the very stuffed sample bag and removed one hefty scoop. The remaining leaf, seems to leave the bag looking almost as full as before I got in to it. I believe if I had poured it all out, I would have a hard time putting it back. The leaf is dark green slightly rolled but straight. It is kind of flattened. It looks like dried grass. It smells nice and sweet.

I brewed for almost two minutes in heavily steaming water. This produced the lightest of yellow green liquids. The aroma of artichoke fills the air.

The sip is sweet and slightly salty. It reminds me of mild dragonwell without the butteriness. It does seem milky. I am getting a bit of numbing on the lips. Mid sip it takes on mineral notes. The aftertaste is fresh, not grassy, with a very slight tartness. Tart may be the wrong word but I can’t quite put a label on it.

On the first cup I added the tea to the water. All the leaf clung to the surface. The second time I steeped, I added a bit more leaf and poured the water over the tea. Now the leaf dances in the water. That is what I was after. There was not an artichoke aroma, until I poured the brew. The leaf is fully open, and reveals small pale green leaves. The taste at first seemed to be pretty much the same as the first cup. As it cooled a bit it came alive and produced a much more flavorful drink.

The third cup was the best yet. The flavor turned sort of cucumber. Not quite like a white tea. In whites, I think of the cucumber as leaning towards watermelon. This did not have the melon notes. Maybe this would go another cup but I don’t have time to find out today.

Chinese green tea fans, this is another great one!

Sigh – I’m not sure what transit is going on overhead but it’s having a doozy of an effect on my emotional state. I’ve just been so blah lately… probably because it’s been cold and rainy too.

But whenever that happens, at least I know there’s tea to help.

I wanted something light and clean today – another sign my body is ready for a new season, I think. Luckily I had a ton of Teavivre samples at my disposal! I picked this one largely because I wanted something with similarities to teas I’d liked before, but not the exact same, you know? (Seriously – I’m usually not this ridiculous!)

But as fickle as I’m being, this managed to work out perfectly. The dry leaf looked like a mixture of sencha and dragonwell, my two favorite greens. It did smell grassy but not quite as vegetal as the senchas can sometimes be. Once steeped, the grassy note magnified in the smell and became brothy as well.

Given the savory smell, I was surprised to taste hints of plum/peach/walnuts. It was very astringent at first, not unpleasantly so, just noticeably drying on the tongue. Strangely enough that astringence has kind of gone away as it’s cooled. The fruity note is more prominent, followed by a dragonwell-esque grassy undertone. This has a slick buttery mouthfeel that really rounds out the complexity.

This is easily one of the most layered greens I’ve ever had – it somehow combines the fruit part of a dancong with the grassiness of a sencha. What an experience! I can’t wait to revisit it soon!

Free sample from Teavivre

Opening the packet I am struck by a strong grassy aroma that reminds me of a Dragonwell. Initially the dry leaf looks flat like a Dragonwell too, but then I look more closely and see that it is actually curled on the edges with colours ranging from yellow-ish green to a mid green colour.

Brewing the tea reveals a pale yellowish green liquor with a buttery feel and a grassy/nutty flavour. It is mellow with a sparkly aftertaste, and less pork-chop-in-ya-face than the Dragonwells that I have tried. Yes it is slightly meaty but there is more of the good, light grassiness about it and the aftertaste lingers nicely.

Another good tea from Teavivre and worthy of keeping some in stock for when the mood takes.

This came with my last Teavivre order of teas as a sample. I went a little overboard buying greens so I have not touched the samples much. ;)

Sniffing the lid of the gaiwan after the rinse step. I’m picking up on a strong buttery and slightly smoky (or similar) smell.

First steep tasted much like I expected; boldly vegetal and buttery. There is also a biting sort of characteristic. Not quite bitter,but it still pulls on my senses like bitterness. (in a good way)

Second steep was milder but slightly more bitter and astringent. Overall tastes very “green” and flavourful.

Third and fourth steeps were both great, with the latter beginning to lose some flavour.

Overall I like how bold the green, vegetal flavour gets. However it’s not one of my fav green teas. There are aspects of it I like, others not so much, but still an enjoyable experience. I prepared it in a gaiwan, so I can’t comment whether or not it’s any better in a teapot.

_{100ml gaiwan, 3g of tea, 4 steeps (rinse, 30s, 50s, 1m20s, 1m40s as recommended on their website)}

I have come to my last sample in this round of Teavivre’s latest offerings. Let’s see if Teavivre has batted 1,000 again like they have with samples in previous rounds…

When I opened the sample packet, a very strong grassy aroma escaped into the air. It was not unpleasant. It was like the smell of a freshly mowed putting green after a Summer sun shower.

I steeped the long green leaves for two minutes at 195 degrees. A pale green liquid emerged at the end of the brewing cycle.

The taste of this tea was light, fresh, and grassy. There also was a slight hint of sweetness beneath the leafy flavor. There was no bitterness to the taste and a light and fresh aftertaste lingered on my palate.

Like the several other Teavivre green teas that I have tasted, one word best describes the flavor of this selection: FRESH. All of Teavivre’s green tea offerings have a just picked taste that makes you think the leaves were harvested this morning.

This is yet another exceptional tea from Teavivre. I can’t wait to see (and taste) what they come up with next!

Thanks to Angel and Teavivre for another nice sample.

Although I have not tried lots of green teas,Teavivre has done more to get me to appreciate green tea than anyone else. I’ve already had great results with their Dragonwell, Jasmine, and Xin Yang Mao Jian.

This tea is completely new to me. I really appreciate that Teavivre seems to be producing more organic teas.

The dry leaves are bright green and similar in shape and length to pine needles. The pleasant aroma is vegetal in nature. Brewed leaves are a bright, almost kelly green and contain more of the vegetal scent. Liquor is translucent and a pale greenish yellow in hue.

The flavor is more of the vegetal-cooked spinach is the flavor it most resembles to me. The tea is slightly sweet and a touch savory. It is smooth with zero bitterness or astringency-don’t let it cool too much though. Also note the recommended brew temp of 195 instead of 175 which is common on some of their other greens.

This is a nice refreshing cup on a hot day. It is really light. The tea was plucked in March of this year, so the antioxidants and nutrients are probably a little higher in this fresh tea-just the thing you need in summer.

Another good job by Teavivre.

This sample was generously provided to me by Teavivre. Thank you Angel and the whole Teavivre Team.
Dry Leaf: Has a sweet vegetal or even grassy aroma.
Wet Leaf: Has a fresh vegetal aroma with a very slight nutty aroma.
Liquor: Was pale in color or a yellowish green.
Taste: This tea was smooth and watery in the mouth. There was a light vegetal flavor with a touch of sweetness and splash of something floral maybe orchid but that would be a wild guess. You also may get a very light nutty flavor too.
Overall Opinion: I give this tea a 89. I think this is a very fresh and clean green tea that is very enjoyable. I think people who enjoy Long Jing would also enjoy this type of tea in my humble opinion.
Vessel: SAMA DOYO Kungfu/Gungfu teapot. 7grams for 220ml or 7oz. of water in the inner cup of pot.

All I can tell you about my impressions of this tea is that it smelled just like asparagus to me, and it tasted like sweet asparagus when I drank it. I imagine if I hadn’t sweetened it, it would have had an entirely different flavor profile (unsweetened asparagus) but I don’t really think I’ll be experimenting. This will go on the swap list.

Thank you to Teavivre for this sample!
Sniffing the brewing leaves was actually kind of exciting! It smelled like delicious, simmering garden greens. I brewed it according to their directions of 194 degrees for 1 minute.
The taste is as good as I was hoping. Juicy, mouthwatering, savory, brothy, salty. I really think green teas like this could make a really good soup base. Onto the shopping list it goes!

This my first sample and tea from Teavivre. Thank you for the chance to try your teas. It will be a great help in my discovery of this world of tea.

I brewed 7g in 8oz water for 1m. It has a wonderful creamy, vegetal taste. It finishes with just a bite of bitterness (the good kind). I love this tea.

2infusion 2m, similar to the first
3infusion 3m, smoother, but still flavorful.

leaves are wonderful to look at in the glass.

This is a repeat of my posting on Teavivre:I steeped the entire 7 gram sample in 8 oz for a minute at 190. I find that I like green tea as long as it is not bitter This one is very enjoyable-plenty of flavor and no bitterness. (I add stevia to all my tea though.)7g of these long green leaves is quite a few tsp. If you only measured 1 or 2 tsp, might be too weak I would think. Better to weigh it on a scale and use 7 gm as they recommend. I got several steeps.

Spring’s first grass freshly mowed then gently sauteed with butter, that’s this tea. It’s a soothing, just-barely-sweet and savory green. A lot of flavor and very smooth, no edge whatsoever. Many thanks to Teavivre for the generous samples, it has been a fun tasting journey!