Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Ginseng’

Longjing is one of China’s Ten Famous Teas but there are many grades from high quality to the standard. Inferior teas are even sometimes passed off as Lonjing. Highest quality Longjing come from the young, first flush of the pre-qingming crop (10 days before the Qingming festival). Teas plucked pre-qingming command a higher price. These teas are prized for having much lighter and subtler aromas than those plucked after the festival.

On the Canton Tea website, it states that the Superior Longjing I am reviewing is made from the first flush of small spring leaves so although this is not pre-qingming, it should still be of exceptional quality.

I examined the dry leaf; they were small and uneven, not very attractive to tell you the truth. Colour was yellowish green, rather than a jade or emerald green, but that could be on account of it being late in production. But despite being late into production and despite these initial physical oddities, aroma and taste holds up well. It is actually a quality tea.

The liquor is light, yellowish green and clear. Aroma is nutty and light. There is also a very pleasant, very nutty, green bean-like taste and a ‘hui-gan’ aftertaste. ‘ Gan’ is a two dimensional taste. ‘Minty-bitterness’. Slightly bitter at first, then comes the sweetness; not exactly sweetness, but it is difficult to translate. When breathing, there is a cool sensation. This is the good kind of bitterness to the Chinese. If it’s strong enough, it reoccurs and is called ‘Hui Gan’. To get a better understanding of this taste, try bitter melon, or Ginseng. They are both very ‘Gan’. I guess the best way to describe it in the dragonwell is as a bitter oaky bite.

I used 5 grams of tea leaves with 600ml of water. Temperature at 75C and steeped it for 2 minutes for the first infusion.

For the second infusion, I steeped it for 3 minutes and it did not taste like a Long Jing anymore. There was no more nuttiness, just a bit of bitterness at the end.

I steeped a second pot, this time at a temperature of 80C with the same amount of water and leaves. The nutty aroma was still present but the green bean / nutty taste was less noticeable and what replaced it was an oakiness with less bitterness.

I would recommend Canton Tea’s Superior Long Jing to tea lovers looking for a green tea with a unique taste — something with a nutty, green-bean-like, oaky bite, basically, the classic dragonwell; although, I would suggest maybe 2 minutes max. for the steep time, at a temperature of 75C for best results.

You can purchase the Superior Dragon Well Green Tea | Traditional Long Jing directly from the Canton Tea Co. website.

When I was contacted and asked to try the Celestial Seasonings Fast Lane Black Tea, I readily agreed. Celestial Seasonings was the very first company to respond to our inquiries when we started IAATL, and sent our very first batch of teas for review, something for which I will be forever grateful. Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime tea is also the tea that started it all for me, back those ummhurummph years ago, when I was but a wee child of 5 or 6.

Apparently, Fast Lane Tea was, a number of years ago, a tea that Celestial Seasonings discontinued. Since then, the legend goes, fans of this tea have petitioned sufficiently to have it return, albeit for a short period of time! This tea is ONLY available online (at http://www.fastlanetea.com or from Celestial Seasonings Tea Shop in Boulder (see the website for details).

Now, to the tea. This tea is a caffeine packed punch in the gut. With a black tea base from Indonesia, we get cinnamon, eleuthero (a variety of ginseng), licorice, nutmeg, and an EXTRA shot of caffeine! This is the very first time that I have see caffeine actually listed as an ingredient!

The smell is spicy/sweet. I can detect the cinnamon and licorice for sure, not so much on the ginseng or nutmeg however. Brewed up, you get what you would expect, a dark liquor, and almost Christmas Spice-like scent to the tea.

It tastes pretty much what you would expect – not particularly strong, a very middle of the road, spicy with sweet notes of the licorice. It is not an amazing, blow me away Darjeeling/Assam/Ceylon single estate loose leaf tea flavour with complexity, but it is also not a bitter, pour it on the neighbors weeds to get rid of them tea. Pleasant and non-offensive, a little passive for my personal tastes, but certainly of higher quality than you would expect from a bagged store shelf tea!

As for kick? Well I wrote this review in 5 minutes at 3:00am, after drinking the tea at 3pm – what do you think? Seriously tho – I can sense that it does have more caffeine than I am used to in a black tea, but I don’t get the frenetic mind warp and massive crash that I get from a triple espresso either – this would be a great tea to study with – students take note!

Bottom line – while it is not a “don’t miss this tea” it is well blended and will appeal to a wide range of people – keep it in the cupboard for when you need a boost.

You can purchase the Fast Lane Black Tea directly from the Celestial Seasonings website.

It’s rare for me to have bagged teas but this is Celestial Seasonings so I’m open to it. When I was small, this is the only tea that we had in the house so it makes me feel a bit nostalgic. It says it’s a blend of green tea, Bai Mu Dan and ginseng root, with honey and lemon. It smells like a Chinese green tea, can’t smell anything else. Opened a bag and I can see small white bits that I’m guessing are ginseng, the rest just looks like green tea but I trust that there must be white tea in there as well. The ingredients list says it also contains licorice, chicory, ginger and orange blossoms, but I seriously can only smell the green tea.

Steeped for two minutes in hot (not boiling) water and now I can smell the lemon verbana and the spices. Brews up a light green with a hint of orange, not a clean brew but it’s not bad. It’s actually quite tasty, though slightly bitter, need to reduce the water temperature I think. Next time I’m going to try the cooler water and see if it steeps up better. Then I’m going to chill it and see if that will pull the flavors out better.

It’s okay, I mean it is what it is and it’s not terrible for what it is.

You can purchase the Honey Lemon Ginseng Green Tea directly from the Celestial Seasonings website.