Jasmine Silver Needle

oh fuzzy little leaves. cute like kittens.
i just don’t think i’m refined enough for Silver Needles yet. they are just so light. i can DEFINITELY smell and taste the jasmine here, which is very peaceful and comforting. but i’m not much for picking out any nuances with these fairy wing light teas.
it won’t stop me from drinking and enjoying though!!
thanks TastyBrew!

This tea smells genuine. It tastes genuine. Even the aftertaste is pure. Very light in color and ever so delicate. My cubicle smells like I have a little greenhouse of Jasmine growing and blooming. I think I must have accomplished the perfect steep because everything seems just so. I feel all girly drinking this cup…and I’m not a big girly girl. (except that I’m not really into bugs touching me…or being anywhere around me.)

This tea will have to be an “in a certain mood” tea. I couldn’t drink it everday.

Oh yeah, for all you visual folks out there, I added the pic of the tea leaves to the site. Thank you…thank you!

It’s official: Lena rocks! Why? Because she sent me this tea.

BEST. JASMINE. EVER.

Seriously. This is what I should have had last night when I was let down by the clunky, graceless jasmine oolong I brewed. This is light and delicate but yet has a substantial enough flavor that it doesn’t seem like flavored water.

Ugh, I don’t have a good enough command of language to express how lovely this jasmine is. Gorgeous. I love breathing in over the cup – the jasmine scent hits my tongue and is so sweet and yummy that I’m tasting the tea before any gets in my mouth.

Looks like I’m going to have to place an Adagio order soon!

I’m not a big Jasmine fan. Normally. This is the BEST Jasmine ANYTHING I have EVER had yet. It makes me ENJOY Jasmine. I never thought I would say that but it’s true. Not that I will suddenly turn all Jasmine on your arses but this is good stuff right here. As soon as I opened the tin it was like I was in the center of Jasmineville. And instead of the Jasmine smelling of old lady perfume it was more of a natural Jasmine scent…truly unexpected. As I steeped the leaves/needles the scent lingered but was still true. After the steep it started to even out but was still quite strong. At this point I was a little worried that the Jasmine taste was going to be too over the top based on the aroma but it was just right. That taste was paired with a nice, soft sweetness which led me to a smirk or smile…this tea has proved me wrong and I don’t mind! The BEST 2 parts was that it WASN’T bitter and that there wasn’t a funky aftertaste. The only thing I disagree with is that the descriptions says a ‘whisper of jasmine’…for me, it was more a SHOUT, but, it all worked out…to be a wonderful tea experience.

I’ve had this sample for a few months as part of Adagio’s silver sampler (4 white teas). I don’t believe I ever logged the other ones and this is the last one I had finished so am determined to try it!

After yesterday’s experience I decided to go mild and gentle on the white. The instructions here say 195 for 3-5 minutes but I did mine for 2.5 minutes with 180 degree water approximately. This seems to have been a good decision.

I don’t really love jasmine tea too much but I can appreciate this. Very mild and sweet, the jasmine is relaxing and soothing. I’m trying to focus on letting the jasmine aroma waft up into my nose rather than focusing on what it tastes like. Good for a relaxing moment. I am not sure I will ever finish it so if anyone wants to swap please let me know!

For such a light tea, this one has a surprising depth of flavor.

First, two shout-outs! One for Jon, for creating the randomizer that chose this tea for me this afternoon. Second, to Auggy, who sent me this tea from the wonderfulness of her heart!

I was in the dentist chair for most of the morning, which was pretty unfun. Half of the time was spent waiting for the dentist to even get to me. I spent an hour and 15 minutes watching Food Network. At least I know how to make peanut butter and jelly pancakes if the need arises.

That need is never going to arise.

So anyway, I popped open Auggy’s little baggy, and can we pause for a second and just say how pretty this one is? Fluffy, fluffy needles scented with a lovely jasmine smell. A very floral, perfumy smell, but still wonderful.

So I put a tablespoon in 6 oz. of water and waited quite impatiently for this to steep up. The infusion smells really light and floral, and it’s a very light yellow. I love the color of white tea in general. Probably the prettiest colored infusions around!

On my first sip of this, I was pretty surprised at the different things going on here. There’s obviously jasmine in full effect. In every single note of this tea, there’s some jasmine. More on the floral side than the juicy side, but very potent. Then comes some white tea notes. They’re almost drowned out by the jasmine, but I can somewhat pick up on them. There’s mainly that sweet nectar taste, and a very slight vegetal note that comes deep from within the silver needles themselves.

The only thing that bugs me a bit about this tea is the endnote. The jasmine lingers on the swallow, and sort of tastes a little… bath-product-like. Like jasmine body wash. Or something like that. This moment gives way to white sweetness, but it’s there, and it’s sort of disconcerting to me. The jasmine just manages to tip into somewhere overwhelming for a split second, before returning to a more balanced flavor profile.

I love how succulent and juicy this one is, and how surprisingly unsubtle it is! Definitely one of Adagio’s better flavors, without a doubt. It’s just that end note that has me a bit confused and perplexed. It’s like someone threw a cloud of fluffy snow at me and there was a rock mixed in.

Very pleased overall, though!

If I could marry a tea, it would be this one. My friend ordered some tea, at my incessant nagging, and this was one of her choices. I’ve never been more proud!
She of course got the first steep, but as it was my tea-ball, I kept the leaves. On steep 4, and this is still amazing.
Very light and elegant. The jasmine dominates, as it should, and it taste so fresh and floral and real. The white is playing an divine violin to it with its soft, rounded grassy tones. This is the sort of thing I been looking for since I became interested in tea.
This fair lady has won me over, and I will most certainly court her till I die.

When I received my order from Adagio, I noticed that my sample tin of Jasmine Silver Needle seemed to be slightly deformed. This resulted in the lid being extremely difficult to remove. I was so excited to open the tin that I didn’t take the time to think things through, and realize that opening a tin of tea over a long shag carpet probably wasn’t the best idea. So finally the lid flew off, and the most expensive tea I have ordered to date went FLYING. It all landed in the shag carpet. What a nightmare. It took me forever to pick it all out, and my first sample cup most likely was an infusion of Jasmine Silver Needle and Carpet Fibers. Tasty.
Despite this nightmare, however, the tea really did taste wonderful. It was so light and flowery, and the smell was AMAZING as well. I have around $15 in frequent cup points built up, so guess what tea I’m going to spend them on?!

One more log and then I think I’ll be ready for sleep. Ah, sleep.

So, here’s another tea that Lena sent to me and I can say with great authority that this is easily the best tea I’ve ever had from Adagio. The smell reminded me very much of the other jasmine teas I frequent – Samovar’s Jasmine Pearl and Harney & Son’s Dragon Pearl Jasmine – which makes sense because…they’re all jasmine teas. Anyhow, I took it to be a good sign and was kind of excited to see how this stood up because of the silver needle aspect.

Here is where things began to fall apart. The jasmine felt heavy, not light and singing. It was almost cloying and tasted slightly artificial. It definitely tasted very much of jasmine, but so much so that I was barely able to pick out the silver needle, and that may only be in my head because I was looking for it so hard. As such, it didn’t have any depth to the flavor. It was Just Jasmine! [Sorry, as I type that, I can’t help but think of Jack from Will & Grace’s one-man show. I wish I could emote jazz-hands.]

I’m very excited to try the keemun she sent to me, because Auggy seems to think very highly of it and Jasmine Silver Needle, though the review does sound rather critical, does slip me a bit of optimism. It’s difficult to get super excited about something when you’ve had something much better. It isn’t that the worser thing is bad, it just isn’t nearly as good, you know? Compared to the rest of what I’ve tried of Adagio’s it’s so much better, though, and so this is why I can see something shimmering in the distance. It could be hope.

So… I finally gave up to the hype surrounding this tea and ordered myself a sample.
I read all the praising tasting notes before trying it and was prepared to face something extraordinary.

I like jasmine teas and am always on the lookout for the perfect jasmine. This isn’t gonna get to the top, that’s for sure. My main gripe is the smell. What I’m looking for is fresh-off-a-bush-jasmine and all I’m getting instead is old-lady-perfume-jasmine. It’s heady, powdery and strong. I can vividly picture an old English lady wearing jasmine perfume and serving this tea to her grandchildren. The lady is so stuck in my mind that I think of her each time I brew this.

I decided to use a gaiwan because I figured since it’s Silver Needle it should stand up to several infusions. And indeed it does. Actually I like the subsequent infusions much better than the first one. The perfume is pretty much gone and now I can enjoy Silver Needle taste with the traces of jasmine flowers.

I’ll continue my experiments with this tea and maybe I’ll find a way to beat the first wave of flavor…

This tea came from Jessica I think, I’ve got so many sample kicking around that it’s hard to recall who gave me what. The leaves of this tea were quite fuzzy and fluffy with silvery hairs like the tea’s names suggests. Knowing how high Adagio’s steeping times generally are, I reduce the recommended 7 minute steeping to 5 minutes. I think it was a good move as even now the jasmine is quite strong and I don’t think I’d care for it any stronger. It doesn’t have that soapy characterstic that some jasmine teas that I’ve tried have had (and that I loathe) and it’s a fairly natural-tasting flavour, though it’s just on the verge of being too perfumy – I like my jasmine to be a bit more subtle.

A very nice, sweet, jasmine white. Fresh hay and flowers. A little chalky as it cools, but very good while hot. The silver needles are much better than Adagio’s base white tea. I used 2 grams for 4oz water, have steeped twice so far.

ETA: Lasted well through 4 steeps, increasing time by 1 minute for each. For $8/oz, that’s… starting to get reasonable, but only just.

This smells wonderful (if you like jasmine, which I do). The taste is overwhelmingly jasmine, which I do not like. I’m just not sure that perfumes (flowers) have a place in tea, although many obviously disagree. I love to wear perfumes, but just don’t think I’m going to like tasting them. It’s kind of like wearing a scent and licking my wrist … wouldn’t do it. It would be awful, I’m sure.

This tea gets high praises on Steepster. Setting personal preferences aside, this is probably a very good jasmine white tea. I do taste the tea in this…it has a grassy taste (hmmm, I wouldn’t go out and eat grass either). And it is definitely screaming “heeeeeey, there’s jasmine in here”. I can see people really liking this, if that’s where their tea preferences are, but it’s just not for me.

My favorite white! 2.25g/6oz water. I’ve been told Adagio’s steeping times for whites are WAY over board so I tried 3 min. WOW… how can this seem stronger than when I steep it for 7? Maybe I just haven’t had it in a while.

Oh God. This is amazing. I was underwhelmed with the first sip or two, if only because I could only taste and smell the jasmine and thought the silver needle had been relegated to second fiddle. Turns out it kind of is – the only place I can really taste it is in my mouth after the sip – but this is still so good. The jasmine isn’t overwhelming at all, which I know a lot of people appreciate (though I dig strong jasmine teas). And that buttery, delicate silver needle taste.. wow. Wow.

I woke up this morning with the migraine-from-hell. I spent most of the morning on the back porch, knitting and sipping this tea, mostly because that was about the most I could manage to do. The jasmine flavor and scent is incredibly rich and soothing. I like jasmine teas, and I like Adagio’s Jasmine Pearls tea a lot, but this is much, much better. The silver needles tea marries with the jasmine very well. The second steep is better than the first – I noted that on the first steep, some of the leaves did not get saturated with water, even after a seven minute steep. The second steep really brings out the full flavor of this tea. That said, I wouldn’t refuse a cup of the first steep, either.

When I saw that Adagio now offers Jasmine Silver Needle I was so exited as it is probably one of my top 3 favorite teas ever. Steeped it 7 min. @ 180°F
It is delicate and yet flavorful. The natural sweetness of this tea never fails to cheer me up! I could drink it by a gallon:)

I’m having a bad day, so maybe I’m taking it out on this tea. But it’s not that great. It’s astringent and a tad bitter and tastes more like a green tea than a white. The jasmine is flaky and meh. I don’t know. I guess I’ll try it again and rate it then. I really wanted to like it. :(

Better than I expected – I’ll give you that, Adagio, I’ll give you that.
I’m glad to see they didn’t totally skimp out of quality for the leaves. l can’t really gauge the quality, because I don’t think I’ve ever tried an amazingly superb white, but it was definitely better than the Peony I had earlier.
A smooth, mellow flavor. Went down very easy, and lacked the nastiness one often finds in cheap flavored/scented teas. While I can’t give the taste paragraphs of praise, I don’t have anything negative to say about it.
I love the scent. I’m rarely too excited by Jasmine scent, but this is just a gorgeous smell. I keep smelling my gaiwan lid… Wonderful. Like soap, or shampoo, or how you’d want your house to smell. Maybe I should use the spent leaves as a qausi-cologne. Would that bring in chicks?

Well, well, not disappointed. I got a sample tin of this (only because the five bucks would bring me to exactly $50, and grant me free shipping), so perhaps I’ll buy a 2 or 4 ouncer of this for treating guests. It’s pretty inexpensive, and a good sampler for people who want to ease their way into the world of white tea. And the scent alone… Ah!

I am actually (so far) a very big fan of Jasmine. It’s slightly reminiscent of Jasmine Green Tea Pearls, but with that beautiful sweet, mild, and delicate Silver Needle aftertaste. It’s a relatively strong Jasmine flavor and the Silver Needle tea is a bit pushed off to the side (to the point of being, as previously stated, an aftertaste).

The scent alone is reason enough to try this tea though. As others have mentioned it’s a very relaxing scent, and it really enhances the experience (yes, experience) that having this tea is.

It’s a very quiet tea and I feel like going to sleep right now, I don’t know what it is, but it’s making me drowsy like no other tea has before. I think I found the perfect thing to help me get to sleep.