Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

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Having settled into a mood for tea tasting on an overcast summer day in my garden, I examined the dry leaf of the Mark T. Wendell Dragonwell Green Tea. Do others see the emerald green and blue colours in the flat dry Dragonwell leaf? After plucking and withering, these tea leaves are pressed and pan-fired (tossed in a hot wok) to stop the enzyme process. Often the smell and taste of the roasting will get into the leaves, leaving a slight smokiness. Not in this case. In fact, the roasting has been handled with the care the tea deserves. Dragonwell is a style of tea, found from the Zhejiang province of China. Dragonwell is typically made from a bud and one or two leaves. The whole leaves are distinctively emerald green and flat and as mentioned above, are pan-fired. Dragonwell tea liquor has a pale greeny-yellow liquor with the scent of fresh-cut grass and toasted chestnuts. It leans towards the savory, with a unique sweet and slightly bitter quality that invites one to drink more of this mellow brew.

As you see in the photo, I examine both the dry leaves (on the right) and the wet (on the left). Whether it is from rough-handling of the packaging, the leaves were most often broken and not very distinctive by the usually elegantly flat leaves. I looked into the centre of the package to see if the leaves were more protected there but found that the leaves were also broken. While the leaves were small attesting to their spirited youthfulness, I concluded that this tea is not the highest of qualities as it contains many single broken leaves and very little sets of a bud and a leaf or two. I was a bit disappointed that my sample was not going to be a connoisseur’s delight and had to lower my expectation to the sample which is typical of a commercially available tea. With that in mind, I prepared myself because if the tea makes it to a typically Dragonwellian taste characteristic, it is still economically viable for a mass consumer market, even if it doesn’t look pretty.

I started with 2.5 grams (0.08818 oz. or about 1 heaping dessert spoonful) of tea in about 150 ml ( 5 ounces) of water in a traditional Gaiwan, the yellow vessel that you see in the accompanying photo. The vessel was warmed first. The water temperature was 80 degrees Celsius (185 Fahrenheit). I timed at 45 seconds with a gentle stir a few seconds before steeping had finished. As evident by the leaves floating on the surface, the water had not been absorbed by the leaves. I decided to extend the timing to 1 minute, thinking that this tea may need a higher temperature at 85 degrees C. (190 F.) or more patience on my part, probably the latter. Leaves that don’t absorb the water right away tend to float on the surface. Usually this means the temperature isn’t quite right to activate the leaf. Sometimes adding a few drops of hot water to the leaves will help them wake up and will expand slightly taking on the heaviness of the water before the initial flow of water over the leaves. It’s sometimes a trade-off between more steep time or a higher temperature. Some Dragonwells can become very bitter in a longer steep. As this is a tea for the general consumer, the astringency would be low and the leaf must be able to tolerate mistakes of the server, such as very hot water and a long steep time. You still have to provide a good cup of tea at the end of the day.

The slow release of the leaf reveals that the second steeping will need to be a steep of about 30-40 seconds and a third steeping a bit longer, maybe up to 1 minute to extract the final liquor without astringency surfacing. When I checked back to the Wendell web site looking for instructions about the Dragonwell, I didn’t find any so I was left on my own to make decisions about its preparation.

I like to smell the vapours before pouring off the tea, lifting the lid of the Gaiwan near the end of the steep to smell the scented steam as it rises. The inside of the lid offers a special opportunity to get up close and personal with an initial impression. I could smell the toasted chestnuts and some vegetative high notes. I poured off some into my cup to cool down and the remainder into a small 6 oz. glass pitcher for a later refill. Before drinking, I raised the steamy wet leaves to my nose to take a good sniff, thinking how all those olfactory receptors were picking up information that would translate into tasting notes if I just let my brain function naturally. When I raised the cup of liquor to my nose, there were soft grassy notes. The colour of the liquor was typical of Dragonwell, pale lemon-yellow and an attractive green-emerald tinge.

Taking a first sip, I found the tea to be bright and warm over the tongue. There was a distinctive feeling of the tea bringing its fullness in the mouth. The tea stimulated some secretions of saliva, making me think that this tea would be good to accompany a meal as it would provide some ease to digestion. There was a slight citrus finish but the taste washed out quickly. This would be a good afternoon sipper because of its low astringency and low complexity so it would not compete with food so could be served with fish, seafood, or cucumber or egg tea sandwiches . There was no doubt I had a physical response to the tea. I breathed in and out like I was letting go of some busy-ness of the day. My shoulders started to relax and I nestled into my garden chair. I seemed to melt into the air and let the tea provide its healing. Any tea that does that has achieved its purpose, in my books.

This tea is not as robust or complex as I’d like to see for a Dragonwell. The tea retained its colour well through 3 steepings. The 4th washed out the taste and the colour weakened. The Wendell Dragonwell is pretty typical of a commercial tea and no doubt is a mid-range, standard loose tea that can be handled successfully by many different preferences and through different preparations. Now if it only looked better as a whole tea, I’d be happier.

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