What-Cha's Vietnam Dragon Cloud Green Tea

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What-Cha Vietnam Dragon Cloud Green Tea
Origin: La Bang, Thai Nguyen, Vietnam
Harvest: March 2015
Cultivar: Hybrid of Ta & long Jing

http://what-cha.com/green-tea/vietnam-dragon-cloud-green-tea/


This is the first of What-cha’s new 2015 Vietnamese teas I decided to try, I originally was planning on having the Ta Jin Xuan Green tea first since I was amused at the idea of a green tea being made from a Jin Xuan hybrid, but ultimately I decided to sample this late one night since I was not expecting much of this. And I kind of regret choosing this first because it is amazing and the other What-Cha 2015 Vietnamese teas may pale in comparison to this. Before I gush about how much I love this tea, What-cha describes this as:
A splendid Vietnamese green tea with the cool minty tones associated with Long Jing coupled with the powerful grassy strength of typical Vietnamese greens, it very much lives up to its rich pedigree.
Dragon Cloud is a great example of the tea experimentation currently ongoing within Vietnam, it is a hybridisation of the native Vietnamese tea cultivar 'Ta' (meaning 'our' in Vietnamese) and the famed Chinese cultivar 'Long Jing' used in the production of Dragon Well.

Sourced direct from the Trong branch of the Vu family who operate a number of small farms around Vietnam, with one family member typically managing a single farm. The Vu family were one of the first to cultivate tea in Thai Nguyen, now considered one of the foremost Vietnamese tea regions.

  
Dry Leaves: The dry leaves are very green and have a fresh grassy aroma; it smells much cleaner than the typical long Jing. The leaves are a little on the small side and feel to be young buds which is amazing because of how inexpensive this tea is. 

Temperature: 167oF (+ 5o for each subsequent steeping)
Brewing Time: Ten Seconds (+ 10 Seconds for each subsequent steeping)
Aroma: Grassy
Flavor: Grassy, Nutty and Mint
Tasting Notes: This is a very powerful tea, What-cha warns about over brewing it, and even from just letting it steep just for ten seconds the brewed liquor is incredibly potent. While at the first steep it feels very much like your typical Long Jing, it lacks the sweetness of many. While at first this feels like a very powerful tea, it does have a soft side, sort of reminds me of a Bi Lo Chun. 

I was not really fond of the minty aftertaste, although I am not a fan of mint flavors to begin with, but the mint was an interesting contrast to the very clean Grassy and Nutty notes.  I decided not to follow my normal template and list my notes for the first three steeping because I could not notice significant change in-between any of them. I did get seven steeping out of this, although the leaves probably had more to give, but by the seventh steeping I was bored. I am not saying this tea is bad per se, but I would have preferred for the tea to change over time and it just didn’t.



Perhaps my style of documenting my tea tasting notes is lacking, while I am sure there was some change happening between infusions, but I could not tell. Oolong Owl tends to describe her tasting experience in numeric form with on a 1-10 scale and perhaps if I tried to train myself to judge intensity rather than strength this post could have been a better post, but at the end of the day even if I felt more competent in my ability to accurately describe this tea and the changes that happen over time I doubt I’d feel any different about it. 


I absolutely love this tea. At the time of writing this What-cha is currently selling 50g for $6.60 and I am confident that this is going to replace Long Jing as my green daily drinker. 



Rah

Just a guy who likes tea.

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