Actual no… I thought about trying the Plum actually, but didn’t. I will give it a try next time. Thanks.
I think it depends how much you like Dragon Well. I am told there is a customer who always come and buy ~3 packages of the First Pick Lion Peak each year. That is 750 gram of First Pick. They also said that he only buys Dragon Well, so presumably mostly only drinks Dragon Well
Problem is if I drink too much dragon well, I start to get dizzy, so I limit myself. I have less or no problem with other teas though.
No kidding… To answer your questions yesterday I drank so much Dragon Well that I had a fuzzy vision last night. 
I was taste testing my 2016 vs 2017 Dragon Well Before Ming back to back (see photo).
Ok, I also drank a lot of Pu Erh too.
By the way, I did a back of the envelope calculation last night. Getting back to the very origin of this conversation, even high end First Pick Dragon Well from Lion Peak (despite seemingly expensive) is probably not much more expensive than drinking bubble tea. Cup-for-cup - that is.
Bubble Tea: $4-6 a cup of ~500mL.
First Pick Lion Peak Dragon Well tea: $660 for 250 gram. 2 gram of tea can brew out about 400-500 mL tea. So effectively, 500 mL of tea from First Pick Dragon Well is about $6
Bubble tea is something I might get one when I see a decent place on the street selling it. It’s fun, but not essential for me. I saw some Pu Erh version in Hong Kong.
Once I bought some tapioca, thinking of making it, but the size I bought was too small and I never attempt to try to find them again in shop, I wonder which tapioca they use.
It is interesting the comparison of dragon well to B tea. But if you want a cup of pre ming lion peak dragon tea in a tea house, won’t be $6 a teapot.
Will you still keep drinking the 2017 version? Me too I still have them.
I wonder what grade they use, when they are doing a dish prepared with dragon well. Example the baby pigeon:
Maybe just a little, but I don’t have much 2017 left anyway, maybe 15 gram.
For the general case, I would recommend people go straight to the 2018 Dragon Well tea if they have it, and don’t worry about finishing the 2017 tea.
As for the dish question, I cannot be sure, but it is unlikely that high grade tea was used. There is actually no strong reason to use a high grade tea because much of the flavor will be overwhelmed by other food flavors. If I have to guess, it won’t be any Dragonwell tea before the Ming season, and it probably won’t be from West Lake neither. Vast majority of Dragon Well tea leaves are not from West Lake. West Lake produces ~10% of all Dragon Well tea.
Just saw your other post. I am not against Bubble tea actually, and I buy them from time to time. There is a nice little place at Irvine which uses honey instead of sugar, and I enjoy it.
Of course, drinking Bubble tea at a store is a different experience than preparing Dragon Well at home. One is like eating out at a restaurant and the other is like cooking at home. I don’t mean a First Pick Dragon Well tea from a tea house will be $6 a cup.
What I wanted to point out is that drinking high grade tea from home is not as elusive or unattainable as many would think. It is just that the payment often comes out as one large lump sum, in this case ~$600-800 for 250 gram of First Pick Dragon Well tea from the Lion Peak region. Yet, a person who orders 2 cups of bubble tea per week, he/she will spend ~$500 in a year. He/she may not notice it because the payment is spread out.
For that matter… a Before Ming (before rain period) Lion Peak Dragon Well tea is about the same price as paying $1.25 for a can of coke from a vending machine.
I recently had the opportunity to sample “real” Pu Erh for the first time. What I have at home is way too strong and I hardly ever drink it. This was smooth and beautiful. The picture shows the second brewing. I wish I had taken a picture of the gorgeous red color of the first brew. I got the feeling the grade might be fudged a little bit, though.
So the person who let me sample their Pu Erh, she was gifted this green tea from the person who actually grows, processes by hand, and sells this tea in a city called Wuxi (无锡).
If you are still traveling there, see if you have a chance to try some aged raw Pu erh (生普洱).
Ripe (熟普洱) Pu Erh tea is more or less a recent invention. The traditional Pu Erh tea is the same as raw Pu Erh tea. When the raw Pu Erh tea is naturally aged (老生普洱), then it gradually changes its flavor. Here is a photo of the change of tea leaves through years:
The tea liquid from also changes its color depending on the aging process:
Ripe Pu Erh tea is a process which tried to speed up this aging progress in a short duration. However, an aged raw Pu Erh tea has a deeper complexity.
This reminds me that I have some Naka mountain Pu-er that I need to remember drinking from the last trip to the tea store.
Naka = 那卡, right? Took me a few seconds to realize. I have recently bought some pretty high quality Pu Erh. If I have time one day, I may upload the photos.
If you enjoy fiction books, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane is a good read. Great tea info too.
Very impressed by a recent cup of Taiwanese spring High Mountain Oolong, Chi Lai Shan (Qilai Shan 奇萊山), Rui-Lin Xu tea farm. Very fresh and long lasting vegetal aroma.
I just came across an article. A Chinese tea master based in Paris (La Maison des Trois Thés) recommends these 2 water:
Mont Roucous
Smell: daffodil and freshness
Taste: roundness, almost silky without mineral taste
Vittel
Smell: chalky, with frictions of schist, mineral
Taste: on the palate, minerality is accentuated, and an after taste of bitterness
Volvic was recommended for the espresso machine because of its very low mineralisation. By using Volvic we wouldn’t need water filters.
I bought on a whimsy since I liked their regular tea drinks when I was in LA area:
Mmm… I think it smells better then when drunk lol. Dunno, I might have a more romanticized imagination on the taste, but it just seemed to be a little too acidic for me.
Hi. Just two comments. The link you have is to the young citrus pu erh tea. Is that what you got? They are about one inch in diameter. The small green citrus (小青柑) pu erh tea is popular now, and it has a potent, raw, and acidic taste (afterall these fruits are raw – very sour in real life) to it. The more traditional ones are the big ripen red citrus (大红柑) with Pu Erh tea They are about 2-3 inch in diameter. The tea is milder and sweeter. You can tea-taste the big red citrus Pu Erh tea next time and see if you like it better.
I don’t think Wing Hop Fung has the best Citrus Pu Erh tea (either green nor red) now. It has a lot of good Pu Erh tea, but not these.
Thanks for your feedbacks.
For comparison (not mine):
Yeah the ones I unwrapped are these tiny small citrus but didn’t really think anything of the size since well… they’re dried (and yeah the little tea balls are roughly the size of a lindt’ truffle). But now that you mention it… that really makes sense haha. Yeah, I definitely think the small ones were not for me. I’ll definitely have to find the larger ones next time.
Yeah, I just bought this one on a whim at the Pasadena location of Bird Pick, not the Arcadia/Santa Anita park location with wing hop. I recall Red Blossom Tea in SF is one of the better purveyors of teas, but I rarely ever step in there though I pass by often enough.
I remember in your earlier post you had mentioned the Citrus tea from Hong Kong, and that one was referring to is the mature (ripen) citrus pu erh tea.
大 紅 柑 普 洱茶
Mandarin Zest Pu Er Tea $ 388
陳皮プーアール茶
陳皮馥郁
Anyway, have a tea-test next time when you are at Wing Hop Fung. Ask to try this following one. If I remember right, it has decent red dried citrus. Unfortunately, I thought the Pu Erh tea leaves are not great. Still give it a try. If anything just to see what it tastes like.
For your green raw citrus pu erh, give them out as gifts. They are very popular these days.
As for Red Blossom Tea… I passed by and walked in a couple times, I am not impressed by its selection to be honest.
Size comparison:
