Bai Mu Dan

Sometimes I feel like I should just log teas every time that I drink them, but I wouldn’t be able to keep it up all the time [hahaha] and it would bother the completionist in me that I had missed some stuff. You should see me game, it’s horrible. If there are achievements, it bothers me to hell if I don’t get all of them. Even if they’re stupid difficult. RPG’s are the worst [and the best]. Usually in these cases, when I can see it coming, it’s better for me to stray from even trying, so that I don’t feel like I’m a big fail ball. When it comes to tea, this means that some of the teas I drink fall by the wayside, even some of the ones I drink fairly often. This is unfortunate, especially when they’re good teas, like Bai Mu Dan.

I haven’t had this from anyone else [though I think I might have a sample of Adagio’s that I haven’t bothered to try yet lying around somewhere] so I don’t have anything to compare it to. I really like it, though. When I was first drinking it, I think it was a little bit…darker, maybe, than I’m used to with white teas. The flavors aren’t bad, it was just different, so there was a small appreciation curve I had to slide up to get the point where I am now with it.

It has a lot of those darker sweet flavors to me. Corn, for one – more like…creamed corn [which I happen to like] than fresh corn, but it has that kind of corn sweetness to it. Sometimes I get notes that remind me lightly of honeydew melon. At times tastes toasted, almost roasty, which mainly happens when it hits the back of my throat. It reminds me of walnuts.

The flavor is light, but it’s not picnic in the park, butterflies flitting about light. It’s more like…end of a summer day, drinking lemonade on the porch as the sun sets through the trees light, if that makes sense. I’m trying to avoid the oxymoron of saying it’s a dark light flavor, but there it is.

It’s a good tea. I don’t drink it nearly as much as I do my other two Samovar favorites – Osmanthus Silver Needle and Downy Sprout, but I probably see it once a week or so. Maybe a little bit less, maybe a little more. It’s pretty easy going, so that’s how we roll.

I neglected to smell the dry leaf, but the leaf post-steeping smells super-roasty. The liquid smells very light, but similar. And when I say very light, I mean very light.

Taste-wise, this is surprising. I was expecting something sweet and it is, but I was expecting sweet flowery and this is more sweet starchy. Actually, it tastes like a diluted version of the liquid in the canned sweet corn niblets we used to get before I knew that, you know, corn was evil. (And I did love that corn juice so). But there is a slightly different note – a deeper, darker, more intense note – that the canned sweet corn juice didn’t have. I can’t quite place it but I’m guessing it is the roasted walnut bit they have in the flavor profile.

For such a light colored and scented tea, the tastes are very dark. It’s good but the connection my mind has made to corn is throwing me off. In my world, corn = evil. So I sip this and go “mmm, dark… sweet… oh crap, corn – EVIL!”

As it cools I’m getting more of the walnut taste (it definitely is the walnut they mention in the profile – it’s screaming walnut now but I’m not getting as much of the roasted as just straight walnut) than the corn taste and that helps with my mental aversion to it but I think I’ve already got a strong mental block against this tea so even switching to a more walnut taste isn’t making me enjoy it. The last few sips are sweet again but mixed nicely with the walnut. But again, the sweet flavor is very corn-sweet.

After thinking on it some, I’m not rating this tea. Because it’s too mixed up in my head with the evils of corn so nothing I give it would be fair. The walnut sweetness is really nice and the flavors are truly lovely so it deserves at least a green smiley but the corn connection make me think red icky face. But neither the green smiley face or red icky face would be an accurate representation of my experience with this tea. Sorry, I’m just too prejudice against the diluted sweet corn juice to rate this accurately.

I am making audible happy noises as I’m drinking this. Thanks to takgoti, of course. MY GOD.

This is probably the most delicious cup of tea I’ve had in a few days. Seriously. SO. GOOD.

I felt like a white tea this afternoon, and I began rummaging around. I almost tried the Adagio Jasmine Silver Needle that Auggy sent me, but then the thought of this popped into my mind, so I decided to steep some up.

This doesn’t really smell like much dry, but the leaves are so pretty! Like real leaves. And downy tips. So pretty. Everything pretty much looks nearly whole. The infusion is a very light honey color. Beautiful to look at. And the smell is sweet like corn, with woodsy highlights.

On my first sip, I literally made an audible “MMMM” noise. It was very loud. And then I gave a little gasp on the swallow, because this baby has depth. It’s very light tasting, but actually pretty heavy on the flavor department. There’s a lot of complex layers going on here. I feel like I can get lost in this. So unexpected and deep, yet so completely sippable and drinkable!

So let’s try to explain this. I’m a bit incoherent right now cause I’m so excited about the taste of this, and I’m still in awe over the flavors that are packed in here, but we’re going to try. There’s deepness here. Toasty notes, as well as pure sweet and floral notes. I’m definitely getting the sweet corn that takgoti mentioned, kissed with a light bit of butter. Delicious and rich. There’s also the feeling of cocoa. I can’t explain this one… not the flavor of it, but the overall end feeling of taking a sip of that drink. I’m getting some sort of nutty flavor, maybe a bit of walnut?

There’s a mouthfeel here too. I think that’s the first time I’ve noticed it. A thickness, a deliciousness that cannot be described. No astringency whatsoever. This is a tea that just keeps on giving. I love the lingering feeling on my tongue of nectar and honey and goodness. I am just finding that I love white tea in general. How something light could be so deep… it’s almost like the Caribbean waters.

The flavors here are so round and pronounced, yet so different, distinct, and enjoyable. I really can’t even begin to properly describe this cup. I’d just suggest getting some for yourself. THANK YOU TAK-TAK FOR AMAZINGNESS, as usual!

I’ll be honest, I’m normally a darker tea kind of guy… I like deep, complex flavours, and as I’ve recently discovered I’m not a fan of added novelty flavours like caramel or coffee because they don’t taste like what I expect…

That said, this is a very light tea. A very, very light tea. However, somehow it manages to be on the right side of the “tastes like water” fence. It has just enough going for it to give it a unique, calming tea with almost some sort of buttery finale.

I had some sort of food poisoning last night so my body was recovering from a long battle (that it lost). I wanted to treat it to some sort of soft, calming tea.

I believe I chose the right one for the job.

The dry leaf smell is very similar to Adagio’s White Peony, but the hay aroma is more in the background. The liquor is the same light brown color, and the brewed tea has almost an identical aroma to Adagio’s version.

Hmm, the taste isn’t quite as strong, but maybe that’s because I used a little less leaf. I’m actually surprised how similar it is. I expected a bigger difference because I thought that Samovar was higher quality than Adagio.

It tastes a little bit woodier and nuttier, with more flavor coming in the aftertaste than what’s present during the sip. It’s definitely delicious, but I’ll probably keep buying Adagio’s version because it’s significantly cheaper (Adagio $5/ounce, Samovar $12/ounce).

I wonder if my palate isn’t refined enough to notice the subtle differences, or if there simply isn’t much of a difference.

One of my favorite white teas for the days where I want something more subtle and less sweet. Very smooth.

Lately I’ve been experimenting with adding a little bit of jasmine pearl tea in and the two mix remarkably well!