caveat emptore Dragon Well

Nigel at snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com4/9/04

Good word, "intimately". Scary point well taken. Generally I try to choose vendors who at least travel to Asia often and have some relationship with the farmers. I try to stay away from those vendors who work only through "agents". Further, I choose vendors who are willing and eager to talk to me about the teas, who answer my questions and are engaged. I avoid those who don't know and won't find out. I shun those who don't answer e-mails or phone calls. Beyond that, I'm pretty helpless. (I should add by way of shameful disclosure, that I have chosen a higher priced tea working under the assumption that it would be authentic while a cheaper version might not be.)

Apropos of your last post regarding CTC/dust/orthodox leaf, it seems to me that ultimately it's little more than style and taste. Just as people read books differently -- at different speeds, levels of depth, for different reasons, from different vantage points -- so with tea: People drink it from any number of perspectives, no one of which is more valid than another. Since I feel best when my visual sense is involved, I go for full leaf. I suspect too that more complexity is possible with full leaf since the leaf doesn't give up all its gifts at once while the little tiny pieces probably do. Again, styles and tastes reign.

On a third note -- I know I asked before, but I forgot -- a friend of mine, while living in Cuba, regularly drank a Georgia tea. She'd like to have a Georgia tea again to bring back those fond memories of Cuba and her life there. It's not a "high" quality leaf she's looking for. Probably a CTC. Where do I get this for her?

Best, Michael

Here's a question. There's a quote from the article:

"It tastes better the second time it’s brewed; the leaves unfold and don’t sink."

It reminds me that my tea always tends to clump at the top of the Chatsford basket, so that I have to stir the water to get it to sink. Is that unrelated, or is it an indicator that the tea is better quality?

Ian

I doubt there's any linkage. In my experience, floating vs. sinking is characteristic of styles of manufacture and what cultivar is used. There are certainly lots of good teas that immediately take up hot water and plummet.

/Lew

I wonder how TenRen is going to respond to having a picture of their product posted with the article?

Cameron

Cameron snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com4/9/04

Cameron, perhaps you are referring to a mysterious picture on the page with the article that will not load here on my computer.

Michael

Funny that the allegation is made without any citations of examples. I don't doubt that fraud is going on, though, given that Dragon Well is synonymous among the general public with quality. Does the author avoid naming names for fear of legal action?

Maybe end-user experienced tasters have tried samples from various vendors and can tell "this isn't the real thing," yet it's still hard to prove.

The article obscures the fact that there are several grades of authentic DW.

Anyway, the precautions Michael mentioned earlier sound quite prudent.

Joe

Lewis snipped-for-privacy@panix1.panix.com4/9/04 11: snipped-for-privacy@panix.com

In point of fact, there might well be linkage, if not with outright authenticity, than perhaps with quality. I've read that top-of-the-line Dragon Well teas are composed of a tiny top leaf plus a little bitty bud, which are flattened and otherwise manipulated in such a way as to cause the leaf to float in the water with the little bitty bud facing down like a rudder creating a beautiful display -- or something along those lines. Curiously, I've seen no such behavior in any DW I've had, which proves nothing. Perhaps those finest of the fine DW's are for Chinese eyes only. Or perhaps its all just myth. But, as in so many things tea, *I* believe. When it comes to DW's, if the leaf is broken, I don't want it. My best DW's have been from ITC and from Grey and Seddon.

Michael

Okay, thanks. Maybe it was wishful thinking. :-)

Ian

Browsing with Opera 7 shows a picture of a box of TenRen Dragonwell teabags on the upper right hand side of the article.

Cheers

snipped-for-privacy@mailandnews.com (Cameron Lewis) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com:

I see it too, in both Opera and IE 5.5.