mandy george > wrote:
>Just returning to the group after a few years absence -- left when it got t=
>aken over by some real vicious jerks.

When was this?

>Looking for advice on finding jasmine greens... How do you rate the various=
> grades. I don't want to pay Mao Feng prices too often but some of the mid-=
>range ones are iffy on leaf quality. I don't have much idea what to look fo=
>r. The bigger leaf ones seem stemmy and uneven.

The yellow box jasmine is sort of the baseline.... it is consistent and
although it's not really very good, it's a standard point that everybody
can use as a reference.

The cheapest jasmine Upton's has is their TP70 which is actually very
inexpensive and a couple steps up from the yellow box. It's a nice large
leaf with visible jasmine flowers in it and doesn't seem to have any
artificial jasmine added. It's got some stems in there but it tastes good.

Many of the cheapies have so much artificial jasmine in there that they
smell like pancake makeup, and you can start with the best possible base
tea and ruin it by doing this sort of thing.

Probably the best jasmine I ever had came from Imperial Tea Court, it
consisted of little pearls with jasmine flower fragments throughout it.
It would take several steeps successfully.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."