Snow Sprout

So cozy!

I’ve only got 5 more teas left to try in the GM sampler, which makes me sad. Somewhere down the line, I’m definitely going to need to order more of their stuff, since it consistently falls above average for me.

Snow Sprout is pretty. Upon opening the packet, it sort of smells like a musty honey smell. With lots of sweetness. Maybe sugared flowered? Anyway, The leaves look like green Silver Needle! Very odd, indeed. They’re fuzzy, and slender, but… they’re not silver. They’re a pale green. Sea green, almost.

Anyway, I steeped up the entire packet of this, because it was around a tablespoon or so, and watched it steep. Funnily enough, once the water hits the leaves (or sprouts? What do I call these guys?), they look like twigs. Knobbly twigs. Very intriguing, indeed.

Anyway, this one steeps up to a very light cup. If someone handed me this, I’d automatically assume it’s white tea. It even smells like a white tea, in that it’s not very interesting on the nose. But does it taste like a white tea?

Yes, yes it does. WEIRD. There isn’t much of a body to it, and the tastes are kind of fuzzy, but here we go, trying to draw some tasting notes out of this puppy. It’s very subtle, like a white tea. For one, I’m getting almost nuttiness at points. I’ve narrowed it down to macadamia nuts! Yes, it’s that sort of nuttiness. There’s a sweetness at the end. It’s more of a green sweetness than a white sweetness. I can’t really explain that; I think it’s only if you’ve experienced the two you’ll be able to tell the difference.

Other than that, I’m not getting much else. It’s definitely a yummy cup of tea, but I don’t think it’s that memorable. For what it is, though, it tastes pretty good!

This elegant dry leaf brews up to a somewhat lackluster tea. I have tasted green teas that had tons more character and I’ve even had white teas that offered more.

I think, however, that the problem is ME and not Golden Moon. I’m one of Swift’s over-sized Brobdingagians in my taste and my temperaments. I like the huge big bow-wow and Snow Spout is like one of those delicate tiny humming-birds: blink and you don’t see it. I think that lovers of green tea might like this a lot and it’s worth trying for lovers of white tea.

I’m thinking of Stevie Smith’s charming couplet:
“That Englishwoman is so refined,
She has no bosom and no behind.”

This tea has got no bosom, no behind, but it is most certainly refined.

I had a nap earlier, which means my brain is pretty worthless right now. Decided to have some of my GM samples in the ever popular endeavor of cleaning out my tea pantry so I can order some tea.

This smells pretty. Sweet. Nectar-y maybe? Not floral, but sweet and not really fruity but maybe not… thick enough to be nectar. Faint honey? Something. Eh. It smells good.

Brewing, it smells a little musty, dry and sweet. Not bad. Not concerning. Seems nice. It’s very light in my cup and I can’t really get much smell from it. But sipping it is quite nice. Sweet with a little of the musty taste that I smelled when in the pot. As it cools, the sweet musty taste turns mostly just sweet with maybe a hint of hay or something… . No briny taste, no real vegetal taste. Just delicate sweetness and flavor. This makes me think of a sweeter version of Rishi’s Snow Buds. But softer and less like a green (which is ironic because this is considered a green and Snow Buds is considered a white but there you go).

Anyway, good stuff. Like it a lot. Sweet, delicate, gentle but flavorful. I’m a fan.

These leaves steeped the lightest colored brew I’ve ever drank, at least for a green tea. I love the lightness of this tea. The flavor is light and sweet and the lightest hint of sweetness to it. I hope to try others of this type down the road. Quite the enjoyable cup.

Oh GM sampler, I have not forsaken thee! I just get distracted by other shiny teas. And puppies. Fwuffie puppies!

This simple tea called my name tonight. Yup. Simple and serene. Not quite yawn, but close. The packet smelled like…wait for it…wait for it…white teeeeea!

Maybe Shakespeare is spoiling me with awesome flavors and it was unfair to have this tea amongst such epic tastes. But I definitely still like subtle teas. Subtletea? (Yeah, I’m thinking that’s been done many-a-time, but I can’t resist teh cheez).

The taste is nice and white tea-ish. But there is the ever-so-slight hint of sweetness. It’s like a tiny powdered sugar fairy sneezed on the leaves. Pleasant aftertaste. Nothing remarkable and I don’t plan to buy more. NE

Golden Moon sample No. 11 of 31. Plucked from the basket at random.

I may have used too much water in steeping these leaves. I had about enough for .9 cups in the sample. I played a little with water levels over the course of several steeps.

The dry leaves are long, and silvery green. Snow seems an apt description; it’s like you’re seeing the green of the leaves through a light dusting of white. I didn’t notice any fuzziness to them but I was a little rushed as it was right before dinner so I didn’t get to do a relaxed examination of the leaves. For me it wasn’t an obvious snow, certainly nothing near Christmas tree flocking. Rather, it was all in gradations of color.

When I first started with this one, I thought this was going to be the story of the tea that wasn’t there. The dry leaves don’t have a strong nose. It took a while to get my olfactory muscle memory working enough to detect something describable. When I finally could smell something I could put into words, the words that came were “salty green.” Like the plants in a marsh leading into an ocean. The saltiness also had a sharpness. I know this will sound weird, but it reminded me of the smell of the brown powder in Lipton Onion Soup Mix.

The liquor was virtually clear. It was only a slight green tinge that kept this from being the invisible tea. Aroma-wise, also nothing very strong. Dew, maybe pollen. The borderline between green and floral.

The taste was similarly subtle but surprisingly complex. It took several steeps for me to get a handle on and appreciate the taste. I took it through four steeps. The complexity gradually started to show itself; at the end of four steeps, I wished I had more of this so I could follow where it led.

Here is what I tasted, in no particular order: a light film of butter, a grainy nuttiness (like the kind you find in “Grape Nuts”), a little whiff of salt, a sweet spicy/salty flavor that reminded me of sauteed leeks at times and at others of sauteed scallions. Then I read the notes here and saw macademia nuts. Yeah, I can see that too; it’s a sweet, mild, buttery, salty nuttiness that I associate with those.

After steeping, the leaves looked the color of overcooked asparagus or green beans, a faded olive green. The silver was gone, but they were still pretty.

So yeah, I want to give this another try. It’s surprisingly interesting and even a little challenging, and like good literature, I think there is a lot more there than I found on a first “read.”

My stomach was not quite ready for the holiday food that I had yesterday. I feel awful today. Today’s tea is all about recovering a sense of balance. Golden Moon calls this the most gentle of green teas, and gentle sounds reeeeeealy nice.

Maybe two minutes was too short of a steep, because I am getting barely anything – hot water with the faintest…I don’t even know how to describe it. Hay? Not really grass, definitely not floral… Even though it’s not firecrackers or revelations, it’s very nice for a queasy tum.

Steep 2, 3 minutes: string beans!!! Again, very light. Strangely enjoyable in a “tonic” sort of way.

Steep 3: lighter string beans. Still comforting, but I think this is it for these leaves.

I enjoyed the second steep the most. It really did help settle my stomach and I liked drinking string beans a lot more than I liked drinking asparagus :) I won’t be buying a tin of this, but I’d be into trying snow sprout from some other tea companies. It’s a really nice tea for when you need to tilt the scale a little more to the wholesome side of things.

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #31
Well, this is it, the last one. I’d been kind of avoiding finally drinking the last sample because that would be the end, and it made me sad. But I guess that now I have my 52teas order to look forward to (and my Matcha!) so I will not be pining for new things to distract me from the teas I have for too long. Of course, this also means that I can get down to the business of getting the teas that I was particularly impressed with, but, alas, Ewa’s Pocketbook dictates that this must wait. In fact, my Golden Moon order must compete in line with: samples from Harney & Sons, the teas I decided on from my Upton samples, AND replenishment of some Adagio teas I am running low on. So who KNOWS when I’ll get around to them.

But let’s talk about this tea. The leaves were very light and smelled almost sweet, which was intriguing, but unfortunately I think I used too much water, because the taste is very faint and doesn’t have the sort of “full” quality that teas with a naturally light taste have when brewed properly. The liquid is very light, a pale brownish yellow almost verging on tan. Not quite the same color as white tea though. It’s somehow…greyer, if that makes sense.

The taste, light as it is, is a delicate sweetness and a very light generalized vegetal taste. The longer it steeps the more hay-like it gets, but I’m not really noticing any of the herbal notes that the description talks about. It’s certainly pleasant enough, but I like my teas a little bolder. Okay, a lot bolder.

And that’s that. The end of the sampler! It was a lot of fun trying all of these different teas, and, to be perfectly honest, I DO still have some left over samples that happened to have slightly more leaves in them. I do wish the packets were slightly larger, so I could try each of these teas two separate times, or so if I accidentally oversteeped/overwatered/overanythinged a tea on the first go around I would have the chance to correct the mistake, but beggars can’t be choosers and the sampler is still a great value and great fun.

I take my leave of my Official Golden Moon Sampler Tasting with this reminder:
And in the end, the tea you take, is equal to the tea you make.
HAHAHAHA THAT’S STUCK IN YOUR HEADS NOW! MY EVIL PLAN IS COMPLETE

This is just yummy and sweet and juicy and D-lish! Very sweet and very refreshing – thirst quenching! I would have to say this is one of my FAVES from GM so far! It has almost a slight minty aftertaste

Doulton ‘s review¹ of this tea pretty much sums up my feelings. I had to really work to enjoy this. I opened the packet and inhaled. The fragrance is light, fresh, green, very subtle. Not green like freshly cut grass, but green like young. When steeped, the fragrance is a bit stronger, but not much. The flavour is like the fragrance. I felt kind of bad drinking it, really, as if by leaving it in my cupboard, it’d continue to mature: so, little tea, what would you like to be when you grow up? I’m thinking my palate’s just not sophisticated enough for this one.

¹ http://steepster.com/Doulton/posts/39590

I’ve never tried this variety before, so I’m excited to see what it’s like. The smell and appearance are both quite attractive. The leaves are thin, slightly curved, and light green – they remind me of the needles from last year’s Christmas tree that I find when I pull out the box of ornaments again. There’s a sweetness to the scent, and maybe even a fruitiness? I’m not able to put my finger on it.

Let’s see, I didn’t burn out my taste buds at lunch with spicy food…what’s going on here? I can’t really taste much of anything. The mysteriously sweet and fruity aroma is gone, and the very light yellow liquor is perhaps just too subtle for me latch onto. I’m getting a very small bit of astringency, a little more mouth feel than a plain cup of hot water would give me, but that’s about it. Ah well.

I want to start by saying that I thought Snow Buds were white tea, but these are classified as green, go figure. Anyhow, the leaves are long and pretty, they smell light and faintly sweet. The sweetness is unidentifiable, it is not floral or sugary/caramel, but a natural, honey-like sweet aroma.

The brewed tea does not smell like much of anything, but I don’t mind that too much. The tea tastes very gentle, it is light and very white flavored, I would not have picked this as a green; there is no vegetal or normal green flavors. Oh well. The tea is sweet without anything having been added, it is smooth and light and goes down easy. Good for an easy-going, relaxing day.

Overall, it was very good. Brewed hot, three minutes, no additives.

Looks like a white, smells like a white, tastes like a white. The tea I got looks different from laurenpressley’s pictures. They are longer leaves twisted and no fuzz.

I do get a little minty feel at the end of a sip, more of the sensation of mint than flavor. Interesting. It’s a very light tea.

My review would of leaned towards why this tea wasn’t for me, but then when it cooled down, it opened up. I really need to stop judging so quick! I don’t think I would buy, but it’s a likable tea. Very shy in flavor, just be patient for she’ll be flirting with your taste buds in no time!

I was preparing some games for my best friend’s bridal shower when I realized I needed a basket…. I looked around and saw Golden Moon Tea’s pretty container. The top cover is perfect! I decided to take a break to read some steepster reviews and was totally inspired by laurenpressley’s Golden Moon Tea post with photos. I haven’t touched my digital SLR in over a year and had been content with point and shoot.

I went back into my pantry, picked Snow Sprout and was finally exposed to Golden Moon Tea. I set things up and started shooting again :) and tea tasting of course! The dry leaf… I didn’t realize that the tea was barely enough for one sample with multiple steeps. The leaves were curled long and light green. The scent was faintly floral. Pretty! I’ll post the photos up on my flickr at another time!

After steeping, the liquid was a light pink brown tinge. It is so light and I almost thought that this was a white instead of green tea. There is a hint of florals and greens and sweetness to it. Very nice and delicate.

Taken plain.
This is my favored kind of green. Buttery toasty and calm. No spinach flavor in the cup just a calm green tea that I can eat anything with.

GM Sample 14/31
This tea is very light and airy. Very pale green color. This tea has a very sweet and refreshing scent to it. The hot tea wasn’t very impressive to me. However as the tea cooled down there was a nice faint grassy taste mixed with honey. Personally I prefer something a with a little more taste, but a nice change from the very complex pu-reh and lapsong I had recently.

I’m having this today since it’s a Chinese tea, and it’s Chinese new year. It’s a lovely cup of green tea, though as @teaplz said, it seems awful close to a white tea. I, too, was surprised to see the hairs on the leaves and the twig-like look they developed in water.

The tea (and wet leaves) has a great smell to it. It’s almost floral. As the tea gets cooler it becomes more obviously green, though still not as sharp as a typical Chinese green. It’s a great cup!

Update! here are the photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lauren_pressley/tags/snowsprout/show/

It’s ok. It’s not bitter, and it just smells like tea. Not sweat, not fruity or flowery, just tea.

It’s probably my untrained palate, but this doesn’t taste like much at all to me. It’s just kind of eh. I wouldn’t turn it down as a gift, but I don’t think I would seek out this tea.

The dry leaves are gorgeous – the long twisted strands are a delight to look at.
I brewed as directed, but the tea came out light. Even too light to actually get flavor. Not more than very slightly flavored hot water. I tried for a second steep, this time much much longer. This second cup was good. It’s gentle sweetness was more like white than green. All in all a nice cuppa.

Experience buying from Golden Moon Tea < More later, but fairly positive overall >

Age of leaf: I purchased this as a sample; no information provided on the date of harvest.

Packaging: I really like the packaging for their samples: a simple long thin silver bag with a stylish looking label displaying their company logo, the name of the tea, brewing instructions and what the package actually contains (the tea and any flavoring).

Appearance and aroma of dry leaf: twisted white and green buds; very light fragrance.

Brewing guidelines 1.5 tsp, 1.5 cups water. Loose in glass Bodum; Stevia added.
……….1st: 165; 2’
……….2nd: 170; 3.5’
……….3rd: 172 5’
……….4th: 180; 7’

Color and aroma of tea liquor: Very light color, very sweet smell.

Flavor of tea liquor: What I remember another Silver Needles to taste like: light, sweet, fruity or floral, and buoyant (this seems to be an awkward word to use here, but it seems to be the best word I can think of for now to describe how it lifts me up, in a way); held up flavor through the fourth steeping (mild flavor, though).

Appearance and aroma of wet leaf: very nice looking buds (only a few stems);they were hanging vertically in my glass Bodum while steeping: very cool!

Value: Way beyond my budget when buying by the ounce, but worth buying and trying once as a sample ($0.99).

Overall: I expect that this is their version of Silver Needles, as it looks, smells and tastes like one sample of Silver Needles I tried last year. I like how the buds are twisted, as I have never seen this before. This one is as good as the one I remember having had before: it is light, and mellow; yet, it is not a tea I would want to drink (or could afford to drink) every day. As I have read in many books about tea, it is good to try this tea at least once.