Jasmine Pearls (Organic) Loose-leaf Green Tea from Wegmans

In Albums: tea

Feb 27th, 2013, by Alex Zorach

This photo shows organic jasmine pearls green tea, from Wegmans. This was a pricier tea among Wegmans' offerings, at $80 a pound, but this price is typical for this style of tea.

Jasmine pearls, which are often marketed as "jasmine dragon pearls", are a particular type of loose-leaf tea, in which jasmine green tea or jasmine silver needle tea is rolled up into small "pearls". Because the production process is so involved, the price of these teas tends to be quite high. And because the production is so costly, only higher-grades of jasmine tea usually tend to be used to produce this type of tea.

I personally think these pearls are a bit more of a gimmick than anything else; they do affect brewing in a few ways, however: the pearls are quite large, enabling you to count out the number of pearls to use, so that you can get exactly the strength of cup you desire without having to measure out the leaf. The pearls are also slow to unfurl, which makes the leaf much slower to infuse than a typical jasmine tea. This can be useful if you want to make multiple infusions, controlling the strength of each cup.