Silver Needle Premium

This is one absolutely delicious white tea.

I bought a tin of this at the Coffee and Tea Festival after having a sample cup of this that was absolutely delicious. The lovely ladies at the Rishi booth suggested steeping this 5 degrees lower than what it says on the tin.

I just got back from a weekend of skiing with friends, and I wanted something warm and nice to soothe the aching muscles and to comfort me. I decided to pop this open and give it a try for some lovely home steeping. One tablespoon of these adorable leaves… So fuzzy and silver with green undertone! I let the leaves steep for a while, watching as they turned light green, and the infusion color barely changed. On the pour, this one is extremely light. Nearly colorness. Pale with a tinge of cream-yellow that is so white tea.

While the smell of the dry leaves was like sweet hay, the infusion smells distinctly buttery and sort of smooth veggie-like, mixed with that hay smell. HAY HAY HAY. Like a white tea usually smells, I guess? It’s all pretty unremarkable, even though it smells very nice…

The taste, though, is pretty rocking. This is the best silver needle I’ve had. By far, so far. It tastes just as good as it did at the Coffee and Tea Festival, except now I’m getting more nuances. It’s very smooth and ridiculously light, with a distinctly floral note. More towards jasmine than rose, but neither. There’s an almost fresh-bread taste as well. Kind of yeasty and full. There’s a slight, sort of sweet steamed edamame flavor. Not like edamame water, but just the type of sweetness that comes from those amazing beans. I’m thinking this is somewhat of a savory component? It’s really good, otherwise. The lingering sweet notes in the aftertaste are akin to a juicy peach, but without any of the flavor of a peach. I don’t even know if that makes any sense, but… you get the point.

It’s incredibly smooth and lacks astringency, which is always welcome.

Loving this little cup of wonderful! Rishi’s on the fast track to becoming one of my favorite tea companies. They’re in line with Samovar and Golden Moon right now. I can see SerendipiTea joining that family once I’ve had more of their stuff. What else is on the to-try list? American Tea Room and The Simple Leaf are the standouts.

Look around.

Now back at me, because this cup of tea is amazing.

Courtesy of the TTB 1.2

I’m going to be honest, I didn’t think I would like this tea but since I was using the TTB as an opportunity to try teas that I normally wouldn’t purchase, I grabbed a bit. The leaves are absolutely adorable – long, slender, green, and super fuzzy. After looking at several reviews to help me determine how to prep this tea, I pinched out around 2 TB of leaves and added water that was just under boiling.

The resulted liquid is pale gold, but lacking the notorious shiny hairs due to my superfine Chatsford infuser (I will be brewing these free next time…I want hairs in my mug too!) The scent is very light, slightly sweet and reminds me of hay with a hint of warm, dew-covered grass. The tea tastes pretty sweet and like warm hay, but it works for this tea. This is way better than I thought it would be as it is very flavorful and smooth with no bitterness or astringency. I’m not sure I would seek out Silver Needles in the future, but I would be open to it.

I love love love Adagio’s Silver Needle, so I was excited to try this. Turns out, I like Adagio’s better. This has the same very silky mouthfeel, but it’s a lot lighter, crisper, and less sweet. Most importantly, it really lacks the buttery flavor of Adagio’s, which is my favorite part about it. It’s good of its own accord, but in Battle Silver Needle, Adagio’s wins for me.

Today we had some of this at the office. Jason’s reaction, “Hmmm, this tastes dirty.”

^{Brewed in Huge Glass Teapot}

I brewed and drank this tea out of my large gaiwan Chinese “glass brewing style”. Overall a fairly typical silver needle white tea with a very light and sweet flavor that to some can be summed up as being “sweet water”. Rishi Silver Needle Premium stands out with a slightly fruity taste to the sweet water which is likely from it being a blend of silver needle from different parts of China.

Being fairly new to the world of loose teas, there have been a lot of firsts for me lately. This marks my first white tea, and it seems like it was a great place to start. There’s something about the little down-covered buds that I find beautiful, and I loved the sweet hay smell coming from the dry leaves. But once the leaves were actually steeped, the aroma was AMAZING. Fantastically fruity and sweet, and slightly floral. It smelled very promising. I wasn’t let down. Subtle straw-like and sweet fruity flavors greeted me, and were very soothing. I drank this when I was sick, and it made me feel a whole lot better. Very relaxing and enjoyable. This isn’t something I would regularly buy, it’s a bit too indulgent and it’s only something I’m in the mood for every so often. But when I am in the mood for it, it really hits the spot. Good stuff.

White teas perplex me for two reasons; one mental and one practical.

First, I always think that white teas will be either boring or overflavored. I don’t know where I picked up this notion because I usually really like white teas. This one is no exception. Rishi’s silver needle is really delicate. It has a bit of a sweet aroma. The taste is a bit more on the vegetal side, but really nice. I’d describe it as a mild green tea with any bitterness absent.

The second reason white tea perplexes me is steep times. More than any other tea, white teas have an enormous range of steep times. I’ve seen recommendations ranging from 30 secs to 8 mins. I think 30 secs-2 mins yields a pretty watery cup. It seems like 5 mins is a pretty popular time to use for this tea. Personally, I went with a longer steep time (7 mins) on this tea and have not tasted any of the bitterness I associate with oversteeping.

In any case, this tea is a solid white tea.

Best silver needle I have ever had! I could steep it overnight and there would be not 1 hint of bitterness whatsoever!!

I’m tasting the Zingerman’s Organic Silver Needle, but I’m pretty sure that it’s really Rishi. This is quite nice and pleasant, citrusy nose, clean flavor. A very good white tea!

Rishi’s Silver Needle has a light delicate flavor. It tastes a bit like sweet hay and baked bread flavor, but is very smooth and not at all bitter. I believe that this would make an excellent tea for someone who is sick or just feeling under the weather.

This is quite a nice tea from which you can draw a lot of complex intricate flavours, over multiple steeps, from a small amount of leaf. Of my two Silver Needles that I own at the moment this is the one that I go to want something softer, and maybe more meditative. The other one I own is Zen Tea’s offering.

Dry, the tea smells of straw and hay mixed together with soft and slightly powdery, sweet and citrusy notes. The leaves are pale yellow to pale green with fine silvery downy pale hairs. The leaves are around one inch long.

The first steep of around 50 seconds resulted in pale beige with a grey tinged tea. it smelled faintly of buttered rice both slightly nutty and creamy, of faint citrus notes, of notes of straw and grain, and of a touch of smoke. It tasted sweet, with a smoky note, a hint of citrus/vitamin C and of straw, all underlain with a silky sweet note that hinted of a mildly flavoured bready fruit and a taste that reminds me of Choclo ( a corn staple in many countries in Latin America). The tea has a noticeable full and silky body. The sweet flavour intensify as it cools.

The 2nd steep had a scent that hints of citrus, with nutty sweet grains, and a faint combined floral/vegetal note like blooming alfalfa mixed with a note of jasmine. The smoke was gone leaving a hint of amber. It tasted of citrus notes, combined with wildflowers nectar (clover and someting spicier), with the straw receeding to the background. The tea remained sweet, but in a cooked fuit / squash or grain type of sweetness. Their was a faint taste of smoke. The aftertaste was mainly a mix of sweet, citrus and vegetal notes.

The 3rd steep was a silky straw, and grain flavour, followed by sweet floral nectar/citrus flavour with an aftertaste of stewed mild flavoured plums with a lingering sweetness.

In the 4th steep the sweet nectar references were more dominant with citrus, straw accents in the background

The remaining steeps required an increase in brewing temperature and maintained a sliky, warm sweetness over straw flavour.

I have steeped this tea up to 10 times before and it is a nice tea when you have some time to explore subtle nuances in flavour and scent. A nice example of this genre of tea. but I am going to hold off rating at this time until I have an opportunity to compare it to Zen Teas option.

has a nice sweet smell, tastes great. no bitterness whatsoever. if you look closely you can see the little hairs from the buds in the liquid. seems to have thicker consistency than most teas i’ve had. one of my favorites.

I’ll be honest and say I haven’t tried many other silver needle teas outside of this one, since it’s the only one my local shop carries. But that being said it was a really nice taste and the guys even had a bodum pitcher filled with this tea cold pressed which took it to a whole new level.

I’m a big fan of Silver Needle teas and this one doesn’t disappoint. The dry leaf smells very green. However, the brewed tea is a classic, smooth drinking Silver Needle. However, it isn’t quite as sweet or complex as my favorite Silver Needle from Adagio.

So fresh and so clean (clean).

Light and bright, a perfect pick me up for a Saturday afternoon

I would have to say this is in my top 3 favorite teas. I think it has great qi and makes my cheeks pink when I have it first thing in the morning. It is probably my favorite tea to have first thing in the morning. When I taste it I can see the leaf bud on the plant taking in the dew of spring. I really like the sweetness this tea offers. It is high in amino acids and low in catechins which is why it has such nice sweetness. The sweetness of amino acids to me in synonymous with the fresh taste of spring.

I use more than the recommended amount and higher temperature. I like to get a rich mouthfeel and extract all of the goodness from the leaf. I let it infuse until I have a deep yellow infusion. (Over night cold brew is also delicious!)

This is the tea that got me hooked on “tea”! The ultimate in subtle flavor!

Very sweet and crisp. Great floral note. Smooth.

Nice tea. You need to be sparing in order to not overdo flavor.