A primer on Grace's Dragonwell green tea selection



Our newest Grace Rare Tea offering
Dragonwell Green Premium Grade Long Jing

I was just reviewing our various blogs from the past year and realized that it has been a long time since I have had an opportunity to sit down and write! We are thankful for all the opportunities we had over the past few months to serve an increased volume of our loyal customers with the finest teas.  It seems that a tin of loose tea made the perfect gift over the holidays. With another large snow storm on its way to this part of the country, our offices were fairly slow paced today. I figured it was the perfect time to sit down with a cup of afternoon tea and write a bit.

When we print our annual catalogs, I am amazed how much of the descriptive text I need to remove from several of our tea listings to get everything to fit in the catalog.  Whether it is the teas origin, shape, taste or color, many of the teas we source have a distinct story behind them. In addition to cupping these great teas when they are presented to me by my sources, I also look deep into the story behind them. Grace's new Dragonwell green tea has been a big hit with our traditional tea drinking customers who were looking to expand their palette a bit.

There are hundreds of different types and grades of Chinese green teas, but only one has earned the accolades of tea drinkers worldwide to be labeled as the most prized and best know green tea. This highly sought after green tea is know as Longjing and is more commonly known as Dragonwell.

Green teas are all processed in a similar manner, but taste and leaf appearance differ from tea to tea due to the varying sections of China in which they are grown. Longjing is cultivated in the Hangzhou region, which was at one time the ancient capital of the Song Dynasty. This region’s numerous lakes have helped in creating this teas special taste, as well as its modern name, Dragon Well. A centuries old myth tells the tale of a large Dragon who inhabited the lake region and lived in the caves and wells of the Tiger Run Spring. At this spring, the Qing dynasty Emperor K’ang-his came to drink tea made using the spring water and the year’s first leaves from the tea plant’s growing around it. He found the liquor of his drink to be sweet and delicious. He then decreed that the eighteen oldest tea plants were thence forth reserved to provide Tribute Tea exclusively for the Emperor’s pleasure.

In modern times, Dragonwell lives up to its legend. In China it is praised for its “four uniques”: jade color, vegetative aroma, mellow chest nutty flavor and singular flat leaf shape. We are proud to import the highest quality Dragonwell available. Each pound of this tea consists of thirty thousand hand-plucked young shoots, grown near the ancient Tiger Run Spring. Once the leaves are allowed to wither, they are then fired in a hot wok. The tea maker then uses his hands to flatten the leaf for about fifteen minutes. After cooling off for an hour, the leaf is returned to the wok for a shorter period at a lower temperature and is then packed by hand. Once you try this special green tea, you will see why the legend of Dragonwell has lasted for centuries and beyond.

Information was researched from the book The New Tea Lover’s Treasury, by James Norwood Pratt, PTA Publishing, San Francisco, CA; 1999.