2009 Sow Mee (Shou Mei, Longevity Brow)

I’m so grateful today a local bakery did a VEGAN Falafel, Hummus, and Veggies in their very own Pita Bread. It’s FAB! I’m sipping on this white tea while eating my lunch and it goes REALLY well with it!

I Agree with Gingko this is reminiscent of Bai Hao (Oriental Beauty). It’s a little different, still, tho, but I sure can taste the similarities

It’s lightweight, gentle, juicy, sweet, and smooth! It’s Crisp and clean! A real winner!

I think TeaEqualsBliss sent me this. Thank you :)
I like this one. Its not “mind blowing” but then I rarely have had a white tea blow my mind.
Its lovely though!
A full review will be on http://sororiteasisters.com/ on Feb 8th but here are a couple snippits:

2009 Shou Mei from Life in Teacup is a light, juicy, white tea that has a lovely buttered vegetal after taste and an almost earthy note in the sip.

There is also a light and lovely toasted marshmallow flavor that just touches your taste buds gently on the initial sip but does not stick around long.

This is a very forgiving tea! My first steep I spaced out preparing to write this review and over steeped it by far too much. I was certain I was going to have to dump the cup, but alas it tasted lovely!

I love the look of the dry leaf! Its so wild and natural looking! It appears as if someone scooped up fallen leaves from the forest floor!

My understanding of Shou Mei is very limited. For a long time, I saw it as one of the least expensive tea in white tea genre, and a restaurant tea. A few months ago, I tried a 2005 white peony that was really interesting. This year, when my supplier sent me the new harvest Bai Hao Silver Needle, he said, “Now it’s time to taste last year’s silver needle again – you may find it even better than when it was new.” I will do it soon. But all these made me want to try some old Shou Mei.

So I got this 2009 Shou Mei. In the past, I always brewed Shou Mei the same way as I do with other white tea – small amount of tea, long steep. This time, I decided to use a “hybrid” method between the old brewing and gongfu brewing. I used leaves that filled about 1/5 -1/4 of the gaiwan, and brewed it for 1 minute for each of the first 3 infusions.

My overall impression is, this is the best Shou Mei I’ve ever had. The tea is floral, smooth, sweet, with a little hint of spiciness. Overall I feel it’s not picky at all. Shorter infusion or longer infusion will change the intensity of the flavor and number of infusions the tea can yield, but will not cause problems – as long as very hot water is used and the tea is not under-steeped. My tea started to get weaker in the 4th infusion, but still went a long way after that. I don’t know what will happen if higher leaf/water ratio is used. But I guess if the leaves fill half of the gaiwan, and infusion is controlled to be within 20-30 seconds, the tea will be great and will yield more infusions.

The tea tastes somewhat like Bai Hao Oolong (Oriental Beauty). People who love Oriental Beauty may consider letting their Shou Mei stay around for a couple of years. After all, Shou Mei is so much cheaper than Oriental Beauty!

So, if you have some old silver needle or white peony left in a corner of your tea cabinet (don’t we all have accidentally forgotten teas!), take it out, taste it and let us know what you think of it!