Product Overview
Xue Long Snow Dragon is an intriguing tea that straddles the line between white and green types of tea with a balanced flavor that has the best of both worlds. Xue Long Snow Dragon is made from a white tea cultivar Fuding Da Hao but is processed like a green tea.
The tea garden can be found in the Chinese province of Yunnan amongst the Wuliang mountains at an average altitude of 1500m. This unusual tea garden is managed with a focus on ecological and social responsibility. Snow Dragon Organic Green Tea is produced using only bio cultivation methods. This ensures the wonderful quality of the beverage, while also maintaining the tea plants without the use of synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides.
All teas are exclusively hand-picked and mostly processed manually. The twisted dry green and silver leaves have a faint fruity aroma and do not make it evident at the outset that Xue Long Snow Dragon green tea is made from leaf buds. This becomes clear once you steep the leaves and the beautiful buds fully unfurl.
The leaves are large and have a distinct coloration and aroma that requires a deft hand in processing. To make this smooth, buttery green tea, a single bud and leaf are plucked then gently pan-roasted over low heat. The down on the young buds is white like the snow, and the curve of the leaf is said to be a dragon shape, giving this tea the name “Snow Dragon.” Maintaining the down intact through the heating process is an artisanal skill. That means withering, steaming, rolling, firing and cooling until the tea reaches the correct level of residual moisture. The final careful and gentle hand rolling in a heated wok-type pan gives the tea its beautiful appearance.
The taste of this tea grows to subtle, yet lush, green tea flavors. Twisted green and silver buds produce a pale gold liquor with a faint fruity aroma that is somewhere between green and white in character. The tea is mild and smooth with sweet, crisp, sparkly notes of peaches and grapes.
Snow Dragon cups to a clear, light green-yellow color. This tea seems best described as having a lush and wet feeling in the mouth. The taste is clean and sweet reflecting its high mountain origination. This tea has a very distinct vegetative flavor that will linger. The clean almost "puckering" finish is characteristic. The cup is exquisitely smooth with a delightful finishing crispness that lingers long after the final sip. The brewed liquor is very light and has a pale gold champagne-like color with a light aroma. The taste is supremely balanced, truly taking the best of white and green tea characters. The flavors are light but more pronounced when compared to a white tea. At the same time, it does not exhibit any strong common green tea characteristics, so there are no overbearing vegetal or grassy flavors or any pronounced astringency. Xue Long Snow Dragon is a perfect green tea to try if you are finding other green teas too ‘green’ tasting or astringent.
