Dragonwell

One of my favourites from Adagio. It has a nice light flavour and is great year round.

Lungjing, I’ve a feeling we’re not in China anymore…

Well, this tea lacks character. Not the tea itself, as a whole, but Adagio’s product. The flavor is just a bit… safe. The leaves are also very often broken. Adagio says its “First Grade” – and, well, it sure is pretty elementary.

Well, this is another tea that my own experience prevents me from really enjoying.
So, I brewed the leaves the only way I find natural now – in a cup. (actually, it should be a glass, but my “glasses” are plastic.) For all you people brewing this in a pot, and timing it… forget it. Leaves, cup, water. That’s all you need. Start sipping after a minute or so, and you’ll enjoy it more.

This is a habit I picked up in China, because that’s how they do it there. My father and I visited the beautiful country around the time of a lungjing harvest in April, and almost everyone was serving it – cafes, restaurants, you name it. They also often serve plain, in-the-shell sunflower seeds with the tea – why, I don’t know. But it was a great combination.
So, not only was I able to experience this tea fresh from the country, my father and I, while in Hangzhou, visited the Dragonwell village. My mother has Paris, I have Lungjing village, I tell you. That was my first time seeing, in person, acres of tea bush. Gorgeous. And every home there processed and served their own tea – the taste varied from house to house.
I never liked Dragonwell until I visited China.

So, on that note…
I can’t really enjoy this tea. It’s not fresh, and I’m not in a Chinese person’s house, trying to buy a tin through a language barrier, or sipping it next to the West Lake. Adagio, you can sell me the mediocre tea, but you can’t sell me the things that should go with it.

Was feeling this today. Good solid cups of tea.

Had this with some egg whites and some tasty, but very messy, “9 grain” toast.

Withholding an actual rating for now, because I can’t be sure I brewed it properly. At best, it’s weak. At worst, it’s… unpleasant.

Eh. I’ve had better. I’ve had worse. This tastes too grassy, too flat for me. The reviewer who mentioned a sewage smell, YES, I get you! It does resemble sewage, lightly. I got a couple samples and planned on giving one to a friend, but I’m adding it to my tea swap collection. Maybe blended with something it would work. I ended up dumping it out and reaching for the Pancake Breakfast blend. Ahh.

OK, I think I must be doing something wrong here. I got a sample of this tea from Adagio today. My first attempt at brewing came out tasting of hot water. I set my Utilitea kettle for green tea, and steeped for three minutes by timer. It tasted like bathwater. I threw that steep out, and steeped again, adding much more tea, about 3 tbsps total for a two cup pot. This was somewhat better, but the result was just mildly sweet, without much in the way of a distinctive flavor.

I suspect this is operator error – my only previous experiences with green tea have been of the premeasured bagged variety. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Firstly, I won’t be rating this tea today because my smell and taste have been severely impaired all week (cold of doom here).
It brewed up a very light yellow liquor. Even though my sense of taste is not the best atm I am sensing some astringency. I think that I will have to try this again when I’m not so congested. The flavor is there I just can’t tell what it is! lol :p

I found that this tea didn’t have the depth that other dragonwell teas do, but it had a nice subtle grassy taste to it that I enjoyed with slightly sweet and buttery flavors towards the end. What I did notice was a lack of astringency with this tea, although I drank this after it had cooled quite a bit and had the resteep iced the next day. I thought this made a nice iced tea, there are many green teas that don’t work well iced.

I think next time around I’ll use more leaf and see if I can’t pull a stronger flavor out of the leaves. I used a heaping teaspoon, but it just didn’t give me enough of the flavor that I was looking for.

Not sure if I need to add more tea or whether its just a weak green. 1.5 tsp per cup.

This is my first Dragonwell tea, so I don’t have much to compare it to besides other green teas! It had a vegetable-like green flavor smoothed over with a unique buttery, roasted nut sort of feel. I liked the roasty smooth flavor. I steeped it three times, but I probably should have stopped at two for this one. The third steep lost a lot of depth, including much of the nuttiness (my favorite thing about it) and gained a bit in the astringency department.

Overall, this tea didn’t blow me away but it intrigued me. I won’t be seeking out more of Adagio’s Dragonwell but I will definitely want to try more of this type of tea from other brands to see some more variations on the theme.

Thanks teaequalsbliss for the sample!