This is a green tea with lily blossoms. The blossoms stand out as a gorgeous orange against the deep, mossy green and white needle twists.
The resulting flavor is light, with a delicate vegetal tang. I think that I can taste trace amounts of the flowers, but this might be in my head because I saw them. The tea is a bit astringent, and leaves a light aftertaste.
I think it’s a pleasant way to start a morning. It’d go nicely with some meditation or the reading of a compelling nonfiction book. (I always associate green tea with spirituals, yogis, and intellectuals.)
Lily-infused tea is “thought to help with blood pressure,” which sounds dubious (SHOW ME THE PEER-REVIEWED STUDIES), but I feel very mellow today as I sip it. Very nice.
This is part of my last box of Simple Loose Leaf’s sample box, and I must say, I’ve been pleased with the offerings overall. It’s a fairly inexpensive box (as they go), with varied options. I feel pretty comfortable recommending the service if you’re interested in sampling a few different options without fully committing to full-size servings, un-tasted.
Want to Know More About This Tea?
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Simple Loose Leaf Tea Company
Description
This tea was part of Simple Loose Leaf Tea Co’s monthly tea subscription.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Dragon Well/Long Jing from Teabook
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Teabook
Tea Description:
Our green tea comes from Hunan, Zhejiang and An Hui provinces in China. In China today, most green teas are still pan fired like originally done in the Yuan Dynasty (1271 – 1368); this helps to dry the leaf in a way to prevent much oxidation to preserve the green color. From a health perspective, green tea is increasingly popular for its content of EGCG (epigallocatechin), an antioxidant which studies show may have a number of health benefits. Green tea flavor and aroma are often referred to as vegetal, mild, cleansing, and sometimes savory or buttery. The tannins range from bitter to sweet depending on the variety.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Teabook is an tea company with a very interesting concept. They provide consumers with individually wrapped servings of loose leaf tea. The packaging looks very similar to that of a tea bag. Each month you’ll receive a box from Teabook with that month’s tea in it individually packaged for your convenience. A very cool idea. To have loose leaf tea packaged in a way that you don’t have to re package it to make it portable makes me want to instantly run out and sign up. Right now it looks like they mainly have straight teas on the site, but I can see this being just a fantastic new way for loose leaf tea drinkers to get their tea.
This tea that I am trying from Teabook is a Dragon Well. I have tried several different types of Dragon Wells from different tea companies and was excited to try out this offering. I brewed this tea up with the water temp at about 180 per the guidelines provided on the package. I poured the contents of the package into my steeper and watched the leaves dance as the water was poured in. I let the tea steep for about 4 minutes and took my first sip.
The major flavor note that you get from this tea is a nice pleasant vegetal note that is rich and satisfying. I took my cuppa into a meeting. As the meeting was progressing, I started to notice that the pleasant vegetal note started to turn more and more into a deeper richer and dare I say darker vegetal flavor.
As much as I love my green teas, I have to say this one may just not be for me. As the tea cools, that seaweed like flavor becomes more and more pronounced. It reminded me of a rich black tea that you allow to cool for way too long and it has become too astringent for you. Similar situation here.
I’m still not sure how I feel about this particular offering yet. I think this would be one to try again later on but I still love the idea of Teabook and plan on checking into it. Such a great concept!
