So in my last post I mentioned the Gilded Teapot Silver Needle tea sample so thought it would be good to do a quick ( and I mean it this time) review on the tea.
Silver Needle is quite a special tea as it is the least processed of the teas & with some arguments in the industry that the leaves should only be the very very freshest bud so that they have the white almost like hair on them (sorry i don’t know the botanical name for them). This is why they are called silver needle as they are very thin fine leaves that look silver. The resulting taste is a very delicate & almost sweet flavour to the leaves. The website says it’s an organic tea from the Funding Dabaicha varietal from Funding, China where the leaves are picked at the end of March.
The dried leaves are amazing! They are completely long full leaves with very tiny white hairs on it so look quite grey. It smells quite light with a hint of almost sweet nuttiness. The instructions say to use 90 degrees but I was a bit cautious & put my kettle to 70 as I didn’t want to burn the leaves. The smell of the liquor is again quite sweet & warming like brown sugar & the taste is very similar. The wet leaves have gone a really lovely light yellowy green & smell very fresh. I get an almost light spinach & vegetable scent from it. The notes from the website says there are notes of ripe honeydew melon & cucumber which I can definitely get.
It’s a very delicate flavour, but so delicious. I don’t really like chemically sweet teas (like my Twinings Salted Caramel Green Tea) as they just taste so false & its almost sickly. But this is so wonderful & I was going to have a slice of cake when I finish the rest of the pot but I really don’t feel like I need anything else now. I will try using the leaves to see how they work in a second infusion as I only have the small sample packet of the tea so I want to get as much out of it as I can. Definitely going to have to plan another trip to Dorchester!