"Strangely dark for a white tea, but with an oddly dull and uninteresting palate." Cap & Kettle’s Teaview: 3/10 Other Teaviews: Shane gave it 6/10, Clay gave it 7/10, Jeff gave it 5/10, Vanessa gave it 5/10 Your Reviews: Add your review »

I have a younger sister who, as a child, owned innumerable toys. Princesses, trolls, life like babies, whatever. If it was even remotely anthropomorphic and could be purchased, chances are, she owned it. Strange thing was, all of these items were made from this same single kind of plastic. Undoubtedly plastic was treated to remove toxins and other harmful things which don’t belong in the digestive system of a feeble and frail human child. And this plastic, ubiquitous in every room of my family’s house, had about it an eerie kind of industrial scent - plastic, sure, but sort of creamy, but in an unpleasant way. If you pick up one of those life-like baby dolls at a toy store and bring it directly to your nostrils, you’ll find that this semi-pliable material has a very, very distinct scent. So much so that it has persisted in my olfactory memory well after my sister had abandoned her childhood toys for… fashion and stickers, or something.

Let me be clear about this now, for there is no other way to describe it. Dragon Pearl’s White Tea smells and tastes exactly like this toy plastic. I thought and pondered and meditated. I wheezed, coughed and grunted. I scratched my head and paced. I raised my arms into the air and bellowed like a mad man (hoping to look like an anguished genius.) Yet nothing else could describe what Dragon Pearl’s White tea tasted like. It is the taste of baby. Plastic, toy, baby. And nothing else.

The flavor is almost invisible, and even with a full 7 minute steep the tea can hardly bare to put one foot on your palate, like a muddied business man before a pristine executive office. But with that longer steep time we get at least some kind of idea what this tea is going for, which is kind of a bad thing. It is strangely dark for a white tea, and the palate is still, hanging like a lifeless fish. Drinking this tea is like driving through Kansas, and you can’t help but want to be elsewhere. Supplementary flavors? Slight overtones of soapiness, a dusty baby powder touch and maybe a little honey sweetness. But these are trumped by the silent, sedentary, gargoyle of a flavor that is toy-friendly plastic.

I think this review is lacking a better description of what that “toy plastic” flavor is. And any critic taking the time to lash at my tea review to that end would be correct. But it is an indescribable taste. How do you describe what bread tastes like? It’s bready and…oh, right, can’t use that descriptor. Or what about cherries? There are things which are prime flavors - they can’t be divided by anything but themselves (and 1, yeah, yeah). This toy plastic is one of those prime flavors. Just know that it is fresh smelling, sterile, sort of reminds me of baby powder and is an alright smell as long as it isn’t in my tea.

Unfortunately for this tea session, it is, which forces me to give Dragon Pearl’s White a matching score.

— To purchase Dragon Pearl White, or for more specific information on ingredients or the story behind this particular blend, click here to go directly to the manufacturer's web site.

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