3 Tasting Notes
Full Review at: http://steeptimes.blogspot.com/2015/07/review-white-dragon-pearl-premium-from.html
Review: White Dragon Pearl Premium from Red Blossom Tea
Today I’ll be reviewing another tea from Red Blossom. I purchased The Discovery Collection which comes with four sample teas, all of which I’ll review. I’ll be drinking the White Dragon Pearl Premium today. This will be my third tea out of the four tea sampler set with just the Oolong left to review.
From the Red Blossom website:
“Dragon Pearl is crafted from spring-harvested Da Bai leaf buds from Fuding County, Fujian. Though it is usually reserved for the base of jasmine teas, we commissioned the farmer to reserve some of this crop for our white tea connoisseurs. The buds are handpicked, then steamed and individually rolled by hand.”
I used the recommend 3.5 grams of leaves for my gaiwan. The leaves have a sweet smell that disappear quickly. After a rinse they smelt of a sweet green tea.
I did the first brew at 195 degrees F for one minute. The leaves had a sweet grassy smell to them and the liquor was a faint light green without much aroma. The taste is subtle and sweet; lacking bitterness; is smooth and creamy with a very satisfying slight astringent finish.
The second brew was at 195 for a minute fifteen. It had a floral and sweet aroma that I enjoyed the and leaves looked great in the gaiwan. They were mostly full and displayed light and dark greens. The liquor was a little darker on this steep though still a very light green. The taste of the front was was sweet that stayed consistent and had a long finish.
The third brew was done at 195 for a minute thirty. I first notice that the aroma lost some of its sweetness. The liquor was about the same color and really had no aroma that I could pick up. It lost some flavor that could probably be regained from a longer steep but with that said it was still sweet and had a bit of astringency at the finish that lingers and mixes with the sweet taste from the earlier steepings. It was about this time I felt a little bit the of tea’s Qi. I was feeling good and the tea was tasting sweet so I decided on a fourth round!
The forth brew was done at 195 for two minutes. The leaves still had a floral sweet smell but with a more exaggerated grassy note. The liquor still was orderless and had the same faint green color. The taste was about the same as steep three with slightly less flavor. At this point I was feeling good of Qi and decided to stop but probably could have gotten a couple of other steeps from the tea if I pushed it. I might even push it harder on the second and third steeps to see what I get.
This is a great sweet and flavorful white tea that has a bit of energy to it. I wouldn’t mind drinking it again and look forward to finishing up my sample of it. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks for reading!
Preparation
from steeptimes.blogspot.com:
Today I’ll be reviewing another tea from Red Blossom. I purchased The Discovery Collection which comes with four sample teas, all of which I’ll review. I’ll be drinking the Three Cultivar Red today.
From the Red Blossom website:
“Our Three Cultivar Red is a unique blend of three varieties from Wuyi Shan and Fujian Province. In a world defined by tradition and age-old crafting methods, this tea is a rare innovation. The tea maker who created it is amongst a small group experimenting with new cultivars and crafting styles to create wonderful and delicious teas that buck tradition.
The leaves for this tea were harvested the first week of May 2014. It consists of leaves of two aromatic cultivars typically reserved for Wuyi Oolongs: Huang Guan Yin and Jin Guan Yin. These teas were then blended with a small leaf cultivar typically used to make green tea.”
The leaf is a beautiful brown color, thin, stiff, and releases a strong sweet aroma that lingers.
I used the recommended 3.5 grams for a gaiwan and did a 10 second rinse to wake the tea and warm the tools. Then I infused for 2 minutes at 205 degrees F.
The liquor had the color of maple syrup and had a soft sweet smell. The leaf had an Earthy sweet aroma.
The first steep was very good. The front of the taste was black tea but it transformed into an earthy sweetness that lasted for a while on my palate and into the next steeping. I wanted to drink every drop of the steep. I was surprised by the transition from black tea taste to the sweetness. It had no overtones of any other flavors.
The second steep was more of the same with the aftertaste building on itself. It lost a little of the black tea front and gained more of the sweetness. I didn’t taste any bitterness or astringency and it was a very gentle finish. I went on to do two more steeps and the tea remained sweet throughout. It lost some flavor but I probably could have went past four steeps and I was pushing the times towards the end to between 4-5 minutes.
I loved this tea so much I tried it the next day at work and went through three large steepings. It had the same great tastes and aromas of the gaiwan session. The sweetness from each steep will stay on your tongue into the next steeping. This is a tea I keep looking forward to drinking again as I love the mix of earthy sweetness with that of a traditional black tea taste. I didn’t get much Qi from either session but it did perk me up. I could see this being an everyday drinker for me. I think this is the best of the sample set.
Preparation
From: http://steeptimes.blogspot.com/ (includes photos and links)
Today I’ll be reviewing a tea from Red Blossom (Congratulations on 30 years of business!). I purchased The Discovery Collection which comes with four sample teas, all of which I’ll review. I’ll be drinking the Pre-Rain Dragonwell 2015 today.
I’m at work while drinking this so I’ll be using my Adagio ingenuiTEA cup to infuse the tea and drinking from a regular ceramic coffee mug.
Leaf
Here are some shots of the leaves.
They smell of straw/hay bales with a sweetness that lasts after you exhale. It has a soft smell that slowly fades. The color of the leaves are a mix of dark greens and browns. I’m not educated enough yet in Dragonwell to know what this might mean for taste later. The leaves mostly look full and have a quarter moon blade shape and are completely flat.
Infusion
I brewed the tea as instructed by Red Blossom on the tea’s page.
The amount of tea might have not been right as I was just guesstimating. I heated the water to 175f and let the leaves steep for a few seconds beyond 1 minute. After I drained the ingenuiTEA I could smell a nutty sweet aroma coming from it with a slight wet straw smell. It reminded me of days spent working 12-14 hours on a farm to earn 3$ an hour! The aroma is soft and disappears from your nose quickly. 99% of the leaves remained floating during the infusion.
Liquor
The color reminds me of a Granny Smith green apple (not the apple below) but a very light shade of it.
It’s a soft and gentle color. The aroma is soft and sweet with a nutty overtone. The fragrance disappears from your nose quickly leaving a small hint of hay mixed with a creamy butter smell behind. The aroma is soft like the color of the liquor. The taste of the arrival is sweet and nutty and feels buttery in your mouth. It then begins to transition into a slight and faint astringent straw finish. It is smooth and simple and doesn’t last long on my palate. I don’t get any throat or chest feel and over two steeping didn’t feel any qi or alertness. The taste stayed consistent throughout the full mug with a little bit of they straw taste slightly coming forward towards the end of the first steeping and was leaving a sweet and buttery aftertaste.
Addition Steeps
The 2nd steep lost a lot of flavor even after I wanted to push the tea a little.
I upped the temperature to 180 and brewed for 2 minutes. The sweet taste was almost gone and had transformed into a vegital flavor. I’m didn’t do a third steeping as a lot of the flavor had vanished.
Thoughts
I’m going to give this a shot using a gaiwan to see if I can push the flavor a little more and will post about any significant changes. I’d like to try and compare this to a Dragonwell I bought in Oakland Chinatown from Golden Tea Shop, which is also where I bought this gaiwan:
Be Well,
Joe
