Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Greens’

Opening the package, the dry leaves smell grassy and have a perky sweetness about them that I’m eager to try (too much time spent drinking roasted and musty green teas has drawn me from teas like this). Two teaspoons of leaves, two cups of water, and three minutes later, I had a pale green brew with a much deeper aroma than the dry leaf had. Deeper, yet still as sweet, the grassy notes linger as well.

Deliciously smooth. The grassy flavour does not overwhelm, as some greens are apt to do. For such a lightly flavoured tea, the brew seems to carry a moderate amount of thickness to the mouthfeel. However, even those light flavours are complex by themselves, making each sip a lingering pleasure, if left to settle on the tongue.

The sweetness and delicacy of the brew leave one with a very refreshed feeling, and it is a very enjoyable tea to drink. I gladly give it a 77 out of 100 on my personal enjoyment scale, and would certainly recommend it.

You can purchase the Dragonwell Green directly from the Mark T. Wendall Tea Company website.

Dry leaf reminds me of fresh cut greens.

Brewed this sample in my IngeniTea and made it into iced tea.

2 minute infusion yields a pale yellow infusion.

This is very much a green oolong, not sweet, not too bitter.

This tea really reminds me of crisp, fresh cut grass.

Good for multiple infusions. The bitterness fades with each infusion, making this oolong more enjoyable the further you go. Try it, Experiment. Enjoy!

You can purchase the Yellow Gold Oolong Tea | Huang Jin Gui Wu Long directly from the Canton Tea Co. website.

Gunpowder is one of my personal favourites, for green tea. However I have only ever purchased it from one or two sources, so I was excited to be able to try it from a company whose gunpowder I had not tried before. Gunpowder is a simple green tea, but sometimes the differences between the same tea from different companies can be quite noticeable.

The dry leaves hold the intense grassiness I have come to associate with most gunpowder greens. After steeping this tea and straining off the leaves, I notice that the steeped leaves have a very dark, almost smoky scent, and I worry that I’ve accidentally heated the water too hot and scalded them. One whiff of the prepared tea banishes that negative thought from my mind, as I am greeted by rolling vegetal tones with a touch of sweet grassiness.

These same aromas swell in the flavour of this tea, and the grassy sweetness permeates all taste buds. The smokiness of this tea is stronger than other gunpowder greens that I have tried, and it is a good addition, in my opinion.

I give this tea a 77 out of 100 on my personal enjoyment scale.

You can purchase the Gunpowder directly from the Adagio website.

In general, green teas take some coddling: keeping the water temp under boiling, not over-measuring the dry leaves, keeping a watchful eye so that you don’t oversteep.

Even for the hard core tea-ophile, some days you just don’t want to have to coddle your tea. Fatigue and/or time constraints just call for a dump-and-dunk cuppa. Thanks to Celestial Seasonings, green tea fans can have just that without much of a concession on quality.

I interpreted “freshly heated water” to be in the 180-degree range and did the prescribed two minute brew. No particular flavor jumps out to get you, but there’s a mild lemony-citrus tang to each swallow. As you can see above, the ingredient listing on the package doesn’t reveal much; a note on the lid says that that white tea has been added for smoothness. Said white tea does cut the five-required-daily-servings-of-veggies taste that you get in most bagged greens.

When convenience needs to overrule preciseness, this tea is a good call.

You can purchase the Authentic Green Tea directly from the Celestial Seasonings website.

Argh! I had a nice tasting notes written up for this tea when Bob the computer decided to die on me. *swears*  So I’ll try and reproduce what I remember from it. >:(

I have to say that I feel a little spoiled with the size of the samples Mike’s been giving me, there’s a good 30-40g of tea in this pouch, for instance!  Dry it has a sweet, vegetal scent, and the leaves are rolled like most green oolongs – although fairly loosely in this case – and the leaves look to be a bit paler than what I normally see. The steeped tea reveals how “Imperial Gold” likely got its name – it’s a deep, warmly-golden liquid. It also has a rather delicate floral aroma that teases the nose rather than punches it.

This is quite a ‘green’ green oolong, with a vegetal flavour profile and, oddly enough, little of the sweetness that I’m used to tasting as an oolong cools off. The first steep, at 4 minutes, is a little weak – not too surprising as the leaves take time to unroll and open up. I’ve been told that the 2nd steep of a green oolong is usually the best, and what I’ve experienced so far with this type of tea seems to bear that out, more or less.

The 2nd steep, at 5 minutes, has a fuller flavour and a more substantial body. It has a flavour like cooked greens with a faintly spicy or peppery note that lingers on the tongue. By the third steep, at 6 minutes, I can tell that the tea is starting to lose its omph, as it has a thinner liquor and a sweet, green taste that’s more fresh than cooked – although there are some buttery notes on the end.

Not my favourite – I like my oolongs sweeter, though I think you can put that down to a matter of personal preference rather than lack of quality in this case.  I gave this a Steepster rating of 69/100.  

You can purchase the Imperial Gold Oolong directly from the Mark T. Wendall Tea Company website.