Fengqing Dragon Pearl Black Tea

Darn, accidentally pressed escape and all my text disappeared. Lovely.

In short for my future self, this mainly tastes like wood with a very slight ‘dark chocolate’ taste to the overwhelming wood taste. It’s a little fruity regarding a slight raising taste, but this tea mainly tastes like wood. Wet wood. Mmmmm…

I have only had Dragon Pearls from another company, and for the price, Teavivre were better!!! Full of flavor. I have been chugging this tea for school, and it’s pretty much my go to for afternoon/early evening.

Medium level of caffeine

It’s just a wonderful black tea. I only like drinking it hot. It needs NOTHING added to it, it’s perfection on its own.

A really nice daily drinker from teavivre. Great both gong fu and western style!

Pausing for a few moments before beginning what promises to be a very busy Saturday. Felt a strong need for a “black ball” tea so I decided to revisit Teavivre’s Dragon Pearls. Tasty rich brew which warms to my core – just what I needed. Peaceful Saturdays for all….

an amazing tea:

when i smell the leaves dry, i smell mustyness and spices.

when i smell the leaves wet, the smell is intensified with hints of chocolate.

when i smell the brewed tea, i smell hints of chocolate and spices.

when i taste the brewed tea, i taste hints of chocolate and medium spices.

the color of the brewed tea is a medium yellow.

i rate this tea a 99 because it is almost perfect.

many thanks to teavivre for this free sample.

dont forget to check out www.teavivre.com

I found a couple of unopened sample packs of Dragon Pearls in one of my tea tins. The weather’s turned icy today where I am, and it’s just about perfect for black teas and oolongs, but I’m almost out of all my autumn and winter teas. So I’ve been brewing these pearls up and trying to decide what to make of them.

The dry tea is gorgeous – tightly made pearls with a scent of chocolate, fresh bread, malt, and a hint of new leather. I like to steep about 4 pearls in about 200-250ml water for quite a long time; 5 minutes or more, and add a very small splash of milk to temper the slight astringency from the long steep time, and to enhance the chocolate and malt notes.

And it’s delicious – sweet and light with a mildly floral and honey aftertaste, but I feel like I’m missing the dark and mature, black-tea-taste.

Ok, so this sample is probably 2 years old…But it’s still tasty. Like, chocolate milk or something. Just ridiculously chocolatey and smooth. I hope these things are restocked sometime soon. I’d like to taste what this tea is like when it’s fresh.

Although chocolaty black teas seem to be a steepster favorite, I usually prefer a more bitter cup when I select a black tea. Since ‘chocolate’ was the first descriptor on the list, I expected a sweet, desserty cup. To my relief, I instead found a slightly bitter, dry, woody flavor dominating, with a subtle chocolate undertone.

I can’t stress enough how much I suck at picking apart the various flavours in a straight tea, so I won’t even try to go there. But what I do know is that I love this. And it can tolerate my habitual over-steeping, which is always a good quality. I don’t really get the taste of cocoa in this, but a feeling of it, if that makes any sense. Like it’s a dark, rich, smooth taste that is not exactly cocoa, but somewhat similar to it in feeling. Like a cousin to cocoa. Or something. Behold my eloquence!

Either way, great cup, so far everything from Teavivre has been a delight. Will order again once I run out!

This is a tasty tea with strong notes of malt and slightly weaker notes of chocolate or cocoa. This tea seems to be very popular on Steepster as it has nearly 300 reviews. This tea is I think good quality but I don’t know why it has so many reviews. If anything to me this is a standard black tea but a good one, not spectacular but worth buying. If I were charged the prices of Whispering Pines for this I’d be annoyed. But Teavivre sells this for quite a reasonable price. It just seems to me that this tea is slightly hyped up, that’s all. I do enjoy the tea.

I brewed this one time in a 16oz Teavana Glass Perfect Tea Maker/Gravity Steeper with 3 tsp leaf and boiling water for 3 min.