The next tea I looked at was the White Peony (Bai Mudan) another White Tea from Fujian, that has the needles along with the fluffier first leaf. This is the first standard BMD I have had in a while and it excites me, like silver needle this tea can take a beating and give you wonderful tea in return. The aroma is a blend of melon, cucumber, lettuce, pollen, and a touch of hay and distant sweetgrass. It is less sweet than the silver needle but smells very fresh and crisp.
Into the basket of steep the leaves go, and when they are removed they still retain their crispness! Notes of melon and cucumber, lettuce, and a touch of wildflowers. There is also a very distant hint of apricot at the finish, but it is light. The liquid is much sweeter, notes of sweetgrass, broken fresh hay, pollen, wildflowers, melon, apricots, and a cooling hint of cucumber. Not as honey sweet as the silver needle, but still quite sweet.
Another tea whose liquid looks like liquid gold, specifically the gold of sunbeams at sunset. The taste of Bai Mudan always reminds me a bit of summer, where silver needle is spring. It starts with pollen and wildflowers and quickly moves to a triple crispness of lettuce, melon, and cucumber. The finish is gently sweet apricot and sweetgrass with a touch of hay in the aftertaste. It lasts for several steepings and gets greener with later steeps, really showcasing the lettuce and cucumber notes. On a whim I took the last steeping of this tea and more or less cold steeped it for about an hour (I used 120 degree water rather than cold, so it was only a sorta cold steeping) and found that it was immensely cooling and crisp, which is good because the day I did that was a bit warm for early April.
For blog, photos, and other ramblings: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2016/04/quantitea-silver-needle-bai-hao-yinzhen.html
