Silver Needle White Tea (Bai Hao Yin Zhen)

Yeasty dry leaf aroma.
Very flavouful, bright sweet taste. Lingering sweetness.

Thanks TeaVivre for including this sample with my recent order.

This is a mild, sweet, haylike white. It is creamy and tasty, but I generally find white teas a little bland and boring. Not bad though! Glad I got to try it :)

This was a freebie bonus sample from Stephanie. She magically managed to send me a different one than I got from the last round of TeaVivre samples, and for that I am very thankful! The leaves are large and fluffy, fuzzy and silver-green in color. They cling together tightly, I had a difficult time separating the sample into halves. Dry scent is soft hay and oats with a slight grassy aroma. There is also a touch of honey. I brewed this at 185 degrees for 3 minutes, just because I wanted to. :P

Once brewed, this tea smells strongly of sweet hay and oats/oatmeal, with a bit of a vegetal note and some lovely honeydew or cucumber (I have trouble telling them apart when there’s sweetness in the tea). This tea is extremely creamy and lovely, and there are strong oat and grain notes with a bit of hay mixed in. I am reminded of slightly sweet pastry, maybe with a touch of honey over the top. I’m so happy to find honeydew/cucumber in the taste as well as the aroma, as I love melon in general.

Overall, I’m finding this tea to be delicious and I’m amazed that this is TeaVivre’s “lowest grade” of silver needle. I can only imagine how wonderful the organic and nonpareil varieties are! Thanks again, Stephanie!

This is from the review contest winnings. Thank you, Angel and Mary!!

After having only a cup of Tanzanian black tea in the morning and some coffee with lots of milk and sugar a while ago, I needed something clean-tasting, something light on the tongue. I thought of green tea but remembered this Silver Needles that I still needed to try. Not a white tea person, but I rolled with it.

Brewed grandpa style. How wonderful to look at the leaves in the glass tumbler!

The aroma of the dry leaf consists of sweet grass, sweet hay (mmm barns), and honeydew (love that fruit!). At this point, I already know I’m in for something.

The liquor is so light-bodied that it is air. It is air. It feels like air. It tastes like air. Clear, fluffy air that has a sweet grass note. By gum, it really is FLUFFY.

This not-a-white-tea person was completely taken by surprise. Considering some things, though, I’ve never really had good quality Silver Needles until now but I feel like a rating is needed for people who are also not white tea drinkers. Holy mackerel, did I well in choosing to drink this now. Thanks again, Teavivre!

Happy Friday everyone, I am currently typing this from my nice antique writing desk in the bedroom. Ben was a real sweetheart and set up a temporary ‘tea lair’ for me until we are able to redo the room, so far I am really loving not having to walk up stairs. One thing I am really excited for when setting up the tea lair in the bedroom is I am going to use my writing desk as a dedicated tea station and I will have all my crafts and other stuff on my other desk. It is going to be awesome to a less cluttered tea area.

Today’s tea is Teavivre’s Silver Needle White Tea (Bai Hao Yin Zhen) probably my favorite of the white teas, it is beautifully fuzzy and delicate, and it is amazingly forgiving when brewing. I have been known to take a silver needle and spend the day brewing it in different ways, enjoying all the subtle variations in taste. This particular Bai Hao Yin Zhen is from Fuding, Fujian, China, harvested March 22, 2014 just a few days after the Vernal Equinox. The aroma of these adorable silver fuzzy leaves is like a field of wildflowers, there are notes of fresh vegetation, hay, flower nectar, and wildflowers. There are also notes of honey, sweet corn, and lettuce. Silver Needle is a complex yet delicate smelling pile of leaves, I have always enjoyed that about it.

I decided to brew this tea in the new style that is all the rage with tea sippers, Grandpa Style! Ok, it is not a new style, people in China have been drinking tea this way for ages, it is the way of sipping for the common man. If you have not had the pleasure of trying it, simply get a bowl (or cup, I prefer tea bowls) toss in some leaves, add water and sip your tea. As the day progresses you just add more water until your leaves are done. The aroma of the steeping leaves is delicate and sweet, there are notes of fresh vegetation, hay, and wildflowers with just a hint of lettuce.

It is not really the first steep, but the first sipping is delicate and sweet. There are notes of honey, fresh hay, lettuce, and a touch of wildflowers. The mouthfeel is smooth and slightly tickly from the fuzzy trichomes, I always find myself becoming really happy when I can feel the fuzzies in my mouth, I know some people prefer to strain them out (giving their strainers a nice velveteen coating) because it makes their mouth itch or makes them cough (my mom is in that boat) but not I.

I added more water and sipped on the tea for the better part of three hours, it is hard to translate that into steeps, but my electric kettle politely informed me that I used half a liter. The more I sip the sweeter the tea gets, more honey sweet and a touch of sweet corn. There is also a note of sage that gets stronger and then eventually fades.

When I get to the end of the tea’s life pretty much all that is left is faint honey sweetness and a touch of lettuce. The tea never gets bitter, and if you let it get chilled (be leaving the room to make food, just an example) and come back to it, the taste is still pretty good, though I prefer it warmer. I certainly recommend giving Silver Needle a go Grandpa Style, it is relaxing and refreshing…perfect for a warm summer day.

For photos and blog: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2014/08/teavivre-silver-needle-white-tea-bai.html

yes…yes i can cheat as much as i want! 28/28 sipdowns as i wanted to try this before giving the remainder to my friend. on the whole…while this is a lovely tea, it doesn’t sing to me like my black teas do…it’s really just toooooo soft. and quiet. :)

This was part of my sampler prize. I don’t usually make white tea, and might have steeped this too warm. It smells nice though, a bit floral and sweet.

Not so sure of the flavour at the moment, but it does seem to go with my orange cake.

I went to the hospital this morning, and I saw great beauty.

There was an older man sitting next to me in the waiting room. He told me he had a brain tumour and only 6 months to live.

I asked what were his plans for the next 6 months. With tears in his eyes, he pointed at the little boy next to him, his grandson. His daughter was also there. He told me he was going to spend as much time as possible with them.

Then the little boy, (three years old) got up, gently took his grandpa’s face between his two miniature hands and stared. He said with a big smile on his face: «Don’t be sad Pappy, all the pain is gone…»

I cried. His daughter cried. Then we all looked at the little boy, and laughed. It was one of those moments where you can’t help reflect on your own life. It was special. That little boy will be forever in my heart and so will be the old man.

When I got home, I was exhausted, but grateful. Grateful to have time in front of me to love and cherish those who are important to me.

I chose to dink this tea for its beauty and purity.

It’s clean, and it gives me some peace and quiet inside. It’s very sweet, brothy and slightly vegetal. It’s milky in a rice milk kind of way. It’s soothing. It’s what I need.

I don’t have much else to say, just thought I’d share this beautiful story with you all :-)

I’ve got to admit something: I’m pretty ignorant when it comes to white teas. I don’t know what it is – maybe I can’t ever brew them right – but they just don’t hold as much appeal to me unless they’re flavoured or blended with fruit.

This tea is a good example. The smell of the leaf and the taste of the tea are both extremely mild. So mild, in fact, that last night when I did my first taste of this, I couldn’t taste anything at all. Giving more leaf and steeping for longer did bring out some sweet notes, but nothing identifiable.

I just don’t have luck with straight white teas. What am I doing wrong? I know that white teas are delicate, so I steep them for less time at lower temperatures, but I just can’t find a straight blend that makes my heart sing.

I just opened my sample of this tea from Tea Vivre. The smell of the dry tea leaves were very pure. I haven’t tried it yet, so I can’t rate it.

Edit: I tried to brew this tea in a small cup, not a gaiwan. This was a huge mistake on my part, because the messiness distracted me from the actual tea. Overall, I did like what I was tasting as it was very pure and elegant. I loved the subtle fuzziness of the leaves and the texture of the tea after it was brewed. I need to try this tea again to gain a full understanding of the taste.