Recently I had the pleasure to receive a sample set of three 2014 Long Jing (Dragon Well) teas from Teavivre, so naturally I had to taste them all together.

My first impression is that the dry leaves look mostly the same. All have the typical Long Jing blade shape. A few white haired leaves appear in each pile, making all three look like very nice full leaf teas. Their dry aromas also were all very similar: toasty and green — exactly what I expected. I think I wouldn’t be able to tell these apart by dry leaf, which is another good reason to always taste a tea before buying if you can; appearances only go so far.

The first tea I tried was the Premium Grade Dragon Well. I used 80°C water for about 1 minute with my green gaiwan and cups (I used matching gaiwans and cups for each tea so you’ll be able to tell them apart in the photos). I tasted fresh Chinese greens and watercress. The liquor was vegetal, but not overwhelmingly so. There was a roasted taste, almost like popcorn kernels, but I detected no buttery qualities (which you’ll see appear in the next tea). It had a nice full mouthfeel which remained into the second infusion, but the roasted flavor basically vanished at that point; not unexpected for this style of tea. The wet leaves showed about half full leaf sets, half broken and are definitely a darker green than the pair of organic teas that come next.

The second tea of the set was the Organic Nonpareil Ming Qian Dragon Well brewed in my brown gaiwan and cups. The flavor was immediately buttery with less watercress than the previous Dragon Well but with a thicker mouthfeel. There was the same roasted quality, like popcorn, but it was also notably salty, especially in the aftertaste. The second infusion had a little roast remaining, but mostly lost the buttery quality. The wet leaves impressively showed almost entirely full leaf sets. They’re everywhere! The color is definitely a lighter green than the Premium. Perhaps that’s a quality of organic harvesting? More likely it was the amount of sun the tea plants were exposed to during the growing period.

For the third taste I had the Organic Superfine Dragon Well in my white gaiwan and cups. The liquor tasted of young green grass and fresh zucchini. Still quite a good experience, but it was notably more flat tasting with a very short aftertaste. It was not bitter, but there was not much energy to it. The wet leaves also showed very few full leaf sets compared to the other two. They were mostly broken apart, while similar in color to the Nonpareil.

Clearly the Nonpareil (as the name suggests) is the top of the line here. But it’s not fair to say that the other two teas were poor examples of Long Jing; they were actually very good, just not quite at the same level as the Nonpareil. Long Jing is a tea that’s so famous and has so much history that the variety in its production may be greater than any other single named tea out of China. Because of that it’s really nice to have a sample of three notably different — but all well-made — examples of this style.