Dragon Powder

When asked what kind of tea he would like after we came back from our walkies (took him up a steep hill, omg, my left lung collapsed half way up and I’ve had a bit of a cough since!) the boyfriend replied, “What have you got in the green department these days?”

Green department. Not a lot, really. It’s all sample-sized (which I’d rather save so I could put some thought into it and post about it) or flavoured (which he wasn’t that interested in). He’s relatively new in green tea and have become rather hooked on sencha recently after having tried the Bolivian green I had, which was sencha-like in presentation, and all I had that wasn’t just samples were Chinese. I didn’t want to get him something radically different from what he had discovered he liked, but I didn’t really have a choice.

Then it turns out that my three tins with plain greens were all nearing empty. None of them had enough for a whole large pot. This did not really make things easier.

So it was either asking him to pick something else or getting creative. I chose creative thinking that if he didn’t like it then at least we had tried it and we could make something else instead. And also I’d be rid of that last bit of ancient Gunpowder of dubious quality at last!

So I took the rest of that and added the same amount of the TeaSpring Long Jing or as close an approximation of the same amount that I could get. I did consider chugging the last bit of the Bi Luo Chun in there as well, but decided not to overdo it. So Dragonwell + Gunpowder = Dragon Powder. Naturally.

Dragonwell is a type that for me has a very distinctive kind of flavour. It’s got that thick, heavy sort of cat-breath-y quality and it can get a bit overwhelming. I was expecting that to come through here as the primary flavour. Especially also considering the fact that the Gunpowder in question was several years old and somewhat faded.

What actually happened was that the Gunpowder really stepped up to the challenge, masking almost all of the cat-breath-y thickness of the Dragonwell, and for the first time in my life I finally got what people mean when they designate Gunpowder as a smoky. I have never been able to find that before.

So the result here worked really well. The Gunpowder got to shine, boosted upwards by the Dragonwell laying a foundation for what little the Gunpowder had left in it. Smooth and somewhat sweet, not really salty and not at all fishy.

I was surprisingly pleased with this.