Vredestein Fortezza 700x23 & 700x25 for a 280 lb team riding on very good, smooth asphalt roads in the Southeast US. Exceptional handling and road feel for aggressive cornering at higher speeds and very low rolling resistance at their recommended 135-145psi ratings. It makes for harsh ride vs. larger volume tires, but having grown up on high psi road racing tires that's just what feels best to me/us. We run similar tires on our single bikes.

The Pasela is a great touring and high-mileage tire, but that typically means the tire uses a heavier, harder tire compound. What you gain in mileage and durability comes at the loss of cornering grip and road feel. This is typical for most high mileage tires. Schwalbe makes some tires that cover the middle ground by offering good performance and longer life / better durability and Continental's Ultra Gatorskins are also a popular tire. I'm partial to folding tires vs. wire beaded tires so my on-road experience with anything other than folding tires is about 50 miles.... the amount of time it took for me to replace the stock tires on our first tandem back in the 90's.

Hmmmm. I'd take all of that with a grain of salt. Jan & Mark's testing was interesting, but there's just too many variables to broadly assume that a larger volume wide tire will uniformly out perform a narrow high pressure tire.

I'll have to go back and re-read the VBQ article to remind myself of which tire they selected to represent the narrow tires in their roll-down tests, but it suffices to say that the variability in rolling resistance across even tires of the same size is HUGE. I posted some rolling resistance numbers and graphs here not too long ago that are worth taking a look at, noting that the data the graphs are based on was compiled by Jobst Brandt.

Moreover, as you alluded to, your local riding & road conditions also factor into tire choice. Clearly, if you have chip-seal or rough roads, larger volume tires are the better choice and will yield lower rolling resistance. However, if you have smooth asphalt roads a narrow high-pressure tire will typically have lower rolling resistance. Where narrow tires become sub-par is when they aren't run at the higher pressures for any one of a number of reasons, at which point you're typically better off going with a larger volume tire. That's why we have both 23mm and 25mm tires on hand for our tandems and will even throw a 28 on the rear if we head somewhere like Texas or certain places in Alabama where chip-seal is the norm.