Reading the Tea Leaves

The sales of Jasmine scented tea rolled up into little pearls has out-paced that of any other I can recall.  At times it seemed that we could never have enough in stock, calling in air shipments to fill the demand.

Known as Dragon Phoenix Pearls or Jasmine Silver Pearls (Mo Li Yin Zhu), each little sphere is about 8-10 mm in diameter.  Fine downy hairs cover tea tips, and Jasmine Pearls should show a silvery sheen.  When brewed, each pearl opens to show its original shape — a bud or a budset (a bud and one leaf or a bud with two leaves).

There are Green pearls without Jasmine scenting, but I do not find this to be an appealing tea, and the Jasmine version far out sells the unscented tea.

Like other Green teas, the leaves are first de-enzymed, but unlike other Green teas that are fully dried later in processing, leaves that are made into “Dragon” Pearls are left slightly damp.  At this stage the leaves, or more accurately - sproutings, are still soft and pliant, ready to be rolled.  The rolling is done by hand, and each pearl will hold its shape after a final drying.  No other ingredients are added to form the pearl’s shape.

Jasmine Pearls (good standard)

The surge in this tea’s popularity led many tea producers to add it to their offerings, and I received samples from virtually all tea growing provinces in China.  A few samples showed dark pearls without the whitish lustre that inspired the tea’s name.  Some samples had pearls that were smaller than the standard with which we were familiar, while other samples had pearls that were larger.

Smaller, darker pearls (more stem inside)

Looking at the wet leaves made the lesson easier; just seeing the proportion of tip and stem made differences evident.  The bouquet of Jasmine gives samples a similar aroma and flavor, so determining quality could not be based on that factor.  (Note that there should be no spent Jasmine blossoms in the tea; a few petals are fine.)  Quality inheres in the tea used to make the little pearls, and it’s simply a matter of taking a close look at the leaves left in your pot or mug.

In a  top grade Jasmine Pearl tea you will see buds and budsets in the wet leaves.  The stem should only be about 1/4, certainly no more than 1/3, of the length of the entire bud/leaf.  The entire budset will likely range from 20mm to 30mm in overall length, and the bud or leafy portion should comprise a generous 3/4 of that.

For a time we even carried a slightly lower grade of Jasmine Silver Pearls, with a wholesale price that was about two-thirds of the premium grade.  The pearls had a good appearance although they were a bit darker than the higher grade; the wet leaves showed a bit more stem, and yet most of our customers still went with the costlier tea.

I remember sending tea samples to prospective buyers, where the samples varied less in quality than in the tea and in the flowers.  Green teas from Fujian, Zhejiang, Anhui and other provinces are used to make pearl tea.  Jasmine is harvested in Guangxi and Hunan as well as those provinces just named.  The various combinations that result (a Zhejiang Green with Guangxi Jasmine or a Fujian Green with Fujian Jasmine) make for Jasmine Pearls that taste slightly different, and our customers did not always select the same sample.  The “heft” of the Green tea, its strength, the nuances of Jasmine’s fragrance, the astringency in the finish — will lead a taster or buyer to select one tea over another, even though the teas look very similar.

If you find that you are a bit disappointed in a Jasmine Pearl tea you may have gotten, try to find one with uniform silver pearls (not a preponderance of darker grey) — that silvery gleam tells you that plenty of buds went into making the tea.  In dry form the pearls should exude the fine scent of Jasmine, and the unfurled wet leaves ought to have more leaf or tip than stem.  For a tea that retails at $75-100 or more per pound, the customer should know why the tea commands such a price.