Slumbering Dragon - The Beast Within You!

Hello hello!

Slumbering Dragon is a beast of a tea that is sold by Crimson Lotus Tea. Slumbering Dragon is a sheng puer that’s harvested in hard to reach places, and it takes three hours of traveling deep into a forest to access this material. One of the villages that this tea comes from isn't even on Google Maps. Anyways, Slumbering Dragon is named so because it comes from older tea tree material, and carries a deep punch. One thing I must ask though: Is Slumbering Dragon strong enough to wake the beast within you? Lets find out!

Steeps 1 - 4

I started this session with a quick rinse, and used 6.6g of tea for a 100ml vessel. Anyways, this session started out with a light tartness, that slowly transformed into a beef-broth base which coated the tongue like an oil. After a few more steeps, a brassy undertone started to appear with a light bitterness that seemed to grow stronger and stronger. By the end of the fourth infusion, this tea’s energy was unleashing the dragon.

Steeps 5 - 9

The fifth infusion started off strong, as the bold base body of beef broth push forward an undertone of bitterness which grew too loud to ignore. Underneath the bitterness, I could detect a light wave of apricots that was left behind on the tongue. With the continuing steeps, this tea’s bitterness grew so strong that every other aspect of this tea was nearly unrecognizable. However, the energy form this tea was making its way throughout my body, and was starting to feel tea drunk.

Steeps 9 - 12

The harshness of the bitter taste began to settle a little bit as the light apricot and brassy notes began to reappear. The broth base began to refine and become more soft around the edges (despite the bitterness), and left a biting impression on the tongue. Throughout these later steeps, the velvet undertone texture of this tea best resembled a white tea, and almost tasted like one too. Anyhow, this tea kept going for a few more steeps, but due to its drunken energy, I had to put it up. This dragon was out of its slumber and was fully awake…

Conclusion

Slumbering Dragon by Crimson Lotus Tea was definitely an interesting experience, primarily because this tea heavily resembled a white tea/black tea mix. Maybe it was this teas quick energy and velvet body texture which led me to this conclusion. To further explain, Slumbering Dragon is one powerhouse of a sheng and definitely carries a heavy punch. This is a tea that I wouldn’t recommend to a tea drinker who is bitter sensitive, because this tea definitely gets rough. Despite that, this is one of the most powerful teas that Crimson Lotus Tea released last year, and is definitely one that I would recommend trying based on the body feel alone. When you try Slumbering Dragon for yourself, don’t be fooled by this tea’s appearance because this is one dragon that definitely will wake the beast within you…