Osmanthus Silver Needle

Can’t really smell much from the dry leaf, but about 10 seconds after the water hits them, there’s this lovely whoosh of scent. I can’t peg the smell though. Sweet, a little floral but there’s something else. The company gives the the options of stone fruit and hay. Well, I have no clue what a stone fruit is, much less what it smells like. Can’t really see the hay much either. Smells more like apricots to me.

Oooh, the taste. It sweet but not sugary sweet. Fruit sweet. Like apricot nectar. Not that I’ve had apricot nectar. But I think if I did, it would taste like this. The flavor is delicate yet strong. Does that make sense? It’s not a weak flavor by any means. But it tastes very soft-breeze-on-a-summer-day.

Two thumbs up! This is going on the list of “Things to buy on my first Samovar order”.

One pretty special cup of tea.

I was craving something white and delicate today, so I pulled this out of the takgoti box of wonders. The leaves are gorgeous, green, fluffy beautiful wonders. And the leaves are speckled with the cutest of teeny blossoms. I’m assuming that this is osmanthus.

A word about osmanthus. I’ve never actually tasted it before now. The leaves aren’t particularly fragrant – white teas usually aren’t, in my experience – but there is an underlying sticky sweetness pervading the smell.

A tablespoon of this into the pot, and we end up with a light-cream-yellow infusion. Now the smell… I’m getting some pineapple, mixed with honeyed hay and silver needle goodness.

The taste… is actually a bit surprising! There’s the definite silver needle base, which is a bit veggie, but very smooth and endlessly drinkable. But the main notes here are this floral-honey note. I’d definitely lean more towards floral, though. And I can’t really identify the flavor note. I guess it tastes like osmanthus! It really is a peach-y sort of pineapple-y conglomeration.

Oh, and that toasted hazelnut that Samovar mentions in their tasting notes? Totally tasting that as well. It’s an end note, but it almost tastes like the husk around the nut once it’s been toasted. That kind of woodsy roasty goodness. I can’t describe it really any other way. Although there is a pretty distinct hazelnut tone as well.

Nom nom nom! Seriously Samovar, stop it. Stop being so awesome at everything that you do.

The dry leaves smell sweet and fruity and make me smile when I sniff them. They are dark green with white tea’s characteristic white downy fuzz. The fragrance is hypnotic, like fruit and flowers and the slightest note of incense. It would make the perfect harem drink emerging from the fantasy world of nineteenth century Orientalist paintings. I can picture houris and bellydancers drinking this while eating Turkish delight as they recline on their silk cushions, brush each other’s hair, and tell scandalous stories.

The incense, fruit, and flowers that made promises in the fragrance come through in the taste. It is a languid sensual tea. It would make an excellent meditation tea.

Much thanks to takgoti for this lovely experience. I will definitely be buying more of this tea.

Okay, a little anecdote before I get to this tea.

When I was little, I had a baby doll that you could feed fake food and then it would “go” in its little diaper. It also came with a tiny potty you could sit it on. I know, kind of gross now that I’m typing it here. But I thought it was the coolest thing ever when I was growing up! It was like a real baby!

Haha, anyway. The fake food you gave it came freeze-dried in a package. You rip open the package, add water, and voila! Fake baby food! Well, now I’m getting to the point of why I’m telling this strange story. This tea (I think it’s the Osmanthus) smells like that baby food.

Now, I’m not necessarily saying that’s a bad thing, but it’s definitely a weird thing. I mean, I probably haven’t thought about that baby doll in 10 or 15 years. But with one whiff of the dry leaves, the memory came flooding back. Funny how aromas can do that, isn’t it?

So, on to the review! The dry tea leaves have tiny dried Osmanthus flower buds in between classic Silver Needles. The brewed aroma is basically nonexistent, which I found surprising. Usually Silver Needle has a nice brewed aroma.

The taste is also a little unexpected. I can definitely taste Silver Needle along with that same weird dried baby food from my childhood doll. I feel like I shouldn’t be drinking this…after all, my mother told me that I couldn’t eat the food I was giving to my doll!

But the overall flavor of the tea is very quiet and subtle. Maybe it needed to steep longer. I’m still surprised and a little bit disappointed that I’m not getting more of a floral Osmanthus note. I’ve tried an Osmanthus-flavored oolong by Lupicia in the past, and I recall that one being very floral without this strange baby food thing going on.

I’m going to have to try this one again later. For now, I think I’ll give it a medium rating. I don’t hate it. But I had high expectations for this tea, and it’s not living up to my hopes.

I received my Samovar order yesterday when I got home from work…awesome surprise! I was SOOO excited to try this. Now, when dealing with Silver Needle tea I will usually put more tea leaves in than what is called for. This is because Silver Needle tea is usually so light in flavor. So what I did was put about 1.5tsp (maybe even closer to 2tsp) in 8oz of water and steeped for a little over 4mins (I got a bit side tracked due to my toddler wanting to help clean, but really ended up making more of a mess lol). Anyways Samovar had a 5min maximum on the canister so I figured I was still safe, but I usually steep my white teas at the middle marker. Anyways, this brewed to a nice honey color… a bit dark for Silver Needle tea I thought, but who cares right?! hehe. I could smell my freshly brewed tea and it was sweet smelling, floral, and earthy… as in a cedar wood earthy! I took my first sip and it was amazing! I have never had Osmanthus flowers before, but it tasted like a nectar… a bit like honeysuckle perhaps? Yes, I think honeysuckle would be a good comparison the more I ponder on this. Then I could fully taste the Silver Needle as well, a nice vegetal/slightly cedar woodsy taste. Very clean and pure tasting, a double plus in my book! This is a total score with Samovar’s tea and I can’t wait to try more of their tea. They definitley know what they are doing and have high quality products!

I was really leery of tasting this tea after the box arrived covered in dust and a dead bug between the inner bag and outer box. But my love of osmanthus, and curiosity got the better of me. I brewed a small gaiwan, and enjoyed it so much that it was soon followed by a large pot to share with a friend. Light, beautiful and really pleasant. A nice balance between the tea and the flowers. Like drinking dewdrops of honeysuckle nectar. Truly one of the best teas I have tasted from Samovar.
And BTW, customer service at Samovar online was fantastic. They responded quickly to emails and wanted to make sure an experience like this didn’t happen again, sending me samples of some of their other teas. Very friendly and very professional.

I bought this sample some time ago, but just getting around to trying it tonight.

It smells delightful – fruity notes along with a fresh vegetative scent and a hint of floral – honeysuckles!

The flavor is nice. I am definitely getting a honeysuckle flavor from this cup – nice and sweet and floral. Very smooth, slightly nutty, with a peach-y like flavor.

Mmmmmmm…. very relaxing, soothing, dreamy!

The appearance of this tea is impressive. The leaves are very loosely packed in the tin as they are quit long and “fluffy” as others have described. The tiny orange-yellow osmanthus blossoms are sprinkled throughout, but you need to shake the tin as they tend to settle to the bottom during shipping. The fragrance is hay>grass>pineapple in that order of predominance.

I was surprised by the color of the brewed tea. The natural coloring of the blossoms turns the pale honey colored silver needle to an interesting gold-orange. The coloration was almost swirled as opposed to uniform. In taste, you get a faint grassiness, then honey then just a touch of peach-pear. I know osmanthus is supposed to have an apricot flavor profile, but this wasn’t quite that sweet.

On my first infusion, the tea got bitter very quickly as the cup cooled to the point where the last sip wasn’t drinkable. (I had followed the merchant’s recommended brewing instructions.) On the second infusion, I decreased the steep time and that seemed to help. Per Samovar, I stopped after two.

I can sum this tea up as “complicated.” It was enjoyable, but it’s sort of like trying to drive a high performance sports car when you’re used to a Chevy. You might enjoy the ride, but probably won’t get the most out of it until you learn how to shift better. I’ll need to come back to this one after I’ve built up more tea experience.

Admittedly this is not the first time I’ve had this tea. The first time I tried it, I’m sorry to say I didn’t even finish my cup.

And it’s a good tea. There’s not really any debate as to the quality of it, or that it promises you the sweetness of osmanthus blossoms alongside the subtle sweetness of a fruity white tea. Those things are all present and accounted for.

It’s the matter of what osmanthus blossoms smell and taste like, and whether or not you’re in the mood for them, I suppose. It’s a very particular sort of floral, in the sense that jasmine tea or rose tea are a very particular sort of floral. Above and beyond the vague description of ‘floral’ for things like oolongs, there is no way to escape the fact that osmanthus infuses every last corner of this tea. On my first encounter with it, I think I was entirely undesirous of steeping myself in that particular aroma and taste.

Tonight, a different story. It was good enough to brew twice, as a matter of fact, and I enjoyed the taste both hot and cold. When the cup has cooled you’re free to find a little bit more of the sweetness they promise, but I would still not call this a particularly sweet white. Osmanthus seems to hint at honeysuckle and apricot without delivering a tangible sweetness, as though what you experience is more like the memory of those things rather than their presence.

All in all, a good and subtle cup, and one I’m glad I gave another chance to…unique and different, and probably inimitable, the only tea that will do when this is the tea you’re wanting.

The smell of this tea reminds me of a farm. Maybe that’s they hay that Samovar mentioned. It also smells lightly sweet.

Whoa, this is way sweeter than I thought it would be. It’s fruity and floral and I totally wasn’t expecting that. I can taste tangerine or some kind of citrus as well as just a hint of something floral. This is a great tea. It’s gentle and kind, but sweet at the same time. I can totally see myself ordering this again. This tea ranks very high on my list of favorites.

A beautifully delicate white tea. A slightly sweet aroma is hidden at first, but when immersed in hot water the aromas come out full bodied and honey like. Very light and crisp, but naturally sweet. This tea is relaxing and reminds me of a forest after a late spring frost. I can only appreciate that comparison having grown up around the woods. Overall a very nice white tea. I will be adding more to my collection.

Pretty good I can taste both the light white tea and the osmanthus flowers.

This is currently my favorite white tea – it has a wonderful fruity flavor while dry, and smell even better after adding the water. The fruitiness comes through well in the taste, but it isn’t too overpowering or sweet.

I like this Osmanthus Silver Needle better tha Rishi’s. It’s a better pairing of the two with a softer balance so one doesn’t overpower the other. The Silver Needle is nice, but doesn’t seem to be of the best quality. It may have been just my batch, but it seems very broken.

I’m fairly new to white tea so I was eager to try out this one from the sample set from Samovar. This tea is very fragrant, but there’s something about it that doesn’t jive with me. I liked the delicate flavor, which leads me to believe I’ll enjoy the other varieties they offer, but not sure I would buy this one again.

This is a tea that just seems to get better and more complex the more that I drink it. I like to drink white teas in the afternoon or early evening, when I know that I might not want to be running around on a caffeine high for too long. That’s why I’m sipping on this one right now and trying to get some work done. It is subtly flavored, I’ve found that there is more sweetness to the aroma than the taste unless you suck some air over it. It’s one of those teas that lends itself to some slow breaths and concentration. Perfect for quiet contemplation [or trying to remain relaxed while studying].