Silver Needle King

Tea type
White Tea
Ingredients
Not available
Flavors
Butter, Cream, Hay, Nuts, Grain, Marshmallow, Oats, Pastries
Sold in
Not available
Caffeine
Not available
Certification
Not available
Edit tea info Last updated by Shang Tea
Average preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 1 min, 30 sec 8 oz / 236 ml

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From Shang Tea

Note: This Tea is 100% Organic

Grown at the crown of Tai Mu Mountain, young and tender leaves, air-dried in the fresh mountain sunshine, create a rounded mellow cup. The #1 rated Silver Needle White Tea in Fujian Province!

The long, silver-white leaves of Silver Needle are gathered on Tai Mu Mountain during a short 3-5 day harvest in the spring. The sweet mellow flavor of Silver Needle makes it a delicious and savored tea among premium white tea drinkers.

http://www.shangtea.com/Silver-Needle

About Shang Tea View company

Company description not available.

11 Tasting Notes

94
174 tasting notes

Another early morning white tea from the Shang sampler. This is divine. Beautiful white fuzzy buds brew up to have lovley cucumber notes, slight sweet fresh hay notes, a nice juicy melon dew texture. This tea is very light and crisp and subtle. The hay notes are one of the prominent notes but it doesn’t overwhelm your mouth and taste buds like other white teas can.

This tea reminds me of the beautiful early morning hours of pre-dawn right before the sun comes up when the sky is starting to lighten but is still nice shades of blue. This is the best Silver Needles I’ve had, it’s just so wonderfully light, crisp and airy.

Preparation
175 °F / 79 °C 1 min, 0 sec
Bonnie

Very nice expression of the silver needle!

Invader Zim

Thank you Bonnie. It was a lovely transportation experience I got from it.

SimpliciTEA

Yes, you said so much with so few words.

Bonnie

I have a lot of those. The way that the natural tea aura of wellbeing interacts with my existing brain malfunctions produces a kind of euphoria. I’m learning to be more aware of how to drink quality tea like this one slowly :)

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100
348 tasting notes

Backlogging a bit.

Shang Tea’s specialty is white tea, and I was lucky to get their magnum opus in the sample pack I bought. I’d hoped it lived up to wildest expectations…and – boy – did it. This is one textured and nuanced Silver Needle, and I’ve had quite a few. Along with the usual mellow melon notes, nuttiness, grape line, is a smoothness echoing vanilla. Unusual but wonderful. It also holds up to three good infusions. Can’t recommend this enough.

Preparation
165 °F / 73 °C 2 min, 30 sec

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92
42 tasting notes

Prepared with two mounded teaspoons to a little over one cup of water.

Steeps a pleasant golden color making me look forward to a silver needle…

Smells slightly of fresh cut hay, but has something sweet added to it… Maybe clover some smell from my past that I can not quite pinpoint tonight. I got two bags of this and they were individually dated with the date of harvest. This one is from March 26. Taste is mild, very pleasant and subtly layered. I am definitely going to have to order more of this after the next harvest! Using a sip with air, I get a hint of sweetness that may be the clover smell coming through on my taste buds that I smelled before. Slight notes of what seem to be cereal grains, mixed with sweet and a very slight hint of dryness after swallowing.

If you like silver needles this is a very good one. If you have not had one before, expect a subtle pleasant crisp tasting tea. If you are looking for bold flavors or something to assault your taste buds go somewhere else. This is a tea for quiet contemplation which in this household (with a four year old) doesn’t happen very often, however it sure is appreciated when it happens, and this tea makes this quiet moment better yet.

I have another bag of Silver Needle King from ShangTea that was dated April 2. I will hopefully get some free time to write about that as well. After this one, I am looking forward to it!

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 2 min, 0 sec

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5 tasting notes

forgot how refreshingly stellar Shang silver needle is!

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100
62 tasting notes

A clean and crisp taste, this is the best white tea that I have ever tasted. What’s even better is that it can be steeped 5+ times easily. Today I steeped 6 times, starting at 30 seconds and eventually working my way up to 6 minutes. The complexity of the taste changed, but I never felt like I wasn’t getting a good cup.

Anyway, this is the first and possibly the only tea that I will give a perfect rating.

Preparation
190 °F / 87 °C 1 min, 0 sec

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1704 tasting notes

Thank you Nicole! I preferred this white to the White Peony King. Honeydew melon notes and creaminess with a thick texture and a savory aftertaste were what I got overall, with maybe a few buttery shifts here and there. Some florals that I normally associate with this tea were definite, though it was not nearly as herby as the peony despite possessing a minimum of a stemmy quality. Overall, it was typical of a Silver Needle Gong Fu with the Shang crisp quality I’ve officially associated myself with.

Again, I’m glad to have a sample thanks to the kind Nicole, but the dry quality deters me just a little-never mind it does not deter me in the Pao Blossom. I bet the Jasmine teas are pretty great quality after trying this and the white peony. If you get the chance to try this tea, it is definitely worth trying though I will say that this is more of a snobs white tea and the other notes might give you a better idea what this is like.

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149 tasting notes

Rummaging through my tea cupboard, I found a single teaspoon of this left that I must’ve hoarded away! Ifjuly sent this to me in one of her lovely packages (she’s one of my favourite people on the planet). I can not believe that I have this to drink today!!!!! EEEEEEEK!!!
This has to be my favourite white tea I have ever tried… It’s buttery and nutty and so very wonderful!
I get pistachio notes along with cream…and the mouthfeel.. Oh, the mouthfeel! It’s fabulous.
So, after finding this tea, I don’t care that the snow is now higher than my neck outside my window (my nice neighbor came through with his snow blower and did my walkway… I think he does this more for the postal worker than for actual neighborly kindness, but it’s still very much appreciated—-so that the postal worker can walk a straight path for a row of houses and not have to keep walking up and down driveways and sidewalks… for clarification. lol).
Anyway, this tea is one of my favourites, and I’m over the moon that I’m sipping it right now!

Flavors: Butter, Cream, Hay, Nuts

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90
3986 tasting notes

Yay, another of my Shang samples! I pretty much picked up all of their “plain” white teas, meaning the non-floral variety. So that includes this one, their White Peony, and their Wild White. I don’t have much experience with white teas in general, so I thought it would be fun to try all of them. So I plucked this little packet out of the cupboard this afternoon when I felt like having one of those white teas. The packet recommended a 1-2 minute brew, but I left it in for an additional 30 seconds after tasting it. I actually did four brews total with the same leaves: 2.5 minutes, 4 minutes, 5 minutes, and 10 minutes.

This tea is very delicious, and I can definitely see the similarity to their Golden Needle King. It has that same amazing grain/oats taste that I love, but this one is a tad lighter. The texture and lightness conjured up visions of marshmallows (although this isn’t really a sweet tea). I also got a very lovely pastry note that reminded me of my favorite Yunnan teas. Yum! There was, of course, the ubiquitous hay flavor that I have tasted in every white tea so far, I find it to be so comforting and it melded beautifully with the grainy oat flavors.

Overall, this was very similar to Shang’s Golden Needle King, but with a lighter touch and a lovely marshmallowy soft texture. Love it! :)

Flavors: Grain, Hay, Marshmallow, Oats, Pastries

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 2 min, 30 sec 2 tsp 8 OZ / 236 ML
mj

I’m on a white tea kick lately too. I’m picking more up here and there

boychik

mj, Shang’s white is exceptional. and im not white tea lover. especially aged, you gotta try it

Cameron B.

boychik, I didn’t see the aged ones in the store… Maybe I just missed them. :(

boychik

http://www.shangtea.com/aged-white-loose
you still in Kansas,right? you can come back. they dont have it in samples, thats why you havent notice it.

boychik

Sample most of them, thanks to Nicole. when i placed an order, i got 3 teas:
Bai Lin Kung fu
Loose Aged White
Tangerine Blossom

mj

Thanks, boychik! I’ll have to place an order with them at some point :)

boychik

i think they have a sale now ;P

mj

Noooo, boychik, what are you doing to me?? I’ve already been seduced by the impending Teavivre sale and I need more Whispering Pines because that is my steady state. White Rhino by Butiki is calling to me too. LOL, I’ll add Shang tea to the queue

boychik

Ready to help, always! Haha
But seriously you can get samples and be ready for BF. they don’t have aged white though in sample size.

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142 tasting notes

I guess I’m reviewing me more than the tea. But after tasting this tea (and many others), I think I can finally make the sweeping statement that I like my white teas scented, blended, or cold brewed (which, at least the way I do it, seems to make them taste like black teas anyway). I certainly don’t hate this tea, but I wouldn’t pick it out of the collection voluntarily either. It turns out I don’t love that hay flavor. If you do like white tea though – you should really check out the other tasting notes on this. It gets raves.

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612 tasting notes

Oh my gosh, I am so impressed with Shang and happy I finally tried them out. I placed an order Thursday and it got here Saturday! With a free sample of this! Egads. And, most important of all, this tea is incredible. I’m no white tea expert (though nor do I dismiss/avoid them, particularly in spring…I don’t drink them as regularly as other tea types but I enjoy them when I remember to have them, if that makes sense) so maybe take this with a grain of salt, but this is the most incredible smelling straight white tea I’ve ever had, pretty sure. It’s potently fragrant, and the body is surprisingly full. I’ve been struggling to figure out just what mouthwatering fruit or herb it’s reminding me vividly of—the closest I can get is a fragrant, musky melon crossed with an extremely tangy light grape (or similar, like starfruit), and there’s an element of incredibly sweet, tangy, fresh cut grass. I LOVE it. My eyes kept rolling back every time I put my face to the cup, and it was the kind of situation where you shamelessly start sniffing hard to the point you know you’ll tire out your senses but can’t stop because the smell is just so attractive. Unbelievably wonderful. The flavor is good too, but nothing compares to the aroma. Huge fan. And what a perfect season for it too—this has been the first gorgeous springy weekend we’ve had really, and I was busy through all of it roaming around out socializing and having a great time. Happy happy.

This also resteeped like a charm. I took a break around steep 4, but I’m sure I could resume and the next cup would probably still be delightful. The first few steeps were under 30 seconds (the first one was only 10 seconds and yet the cup was amazing in aroma, flavor, and texture), then I started stretching them out, a minute, then more, and so on.

ETA: Just looked at the other notes hoping I’d find my missing fragrance note—hay and clover, yes for sure. I think it may well be fresh clover that’s what I’m most grasping at. Reminds me of hot hazy summer afternoons in the big yard at daycare when we’d make chain necklaces with clover and grass. So vivid, yet strangely so unnameable/hard to pin down…

And something like cucumber, yes for sure, but sweeter and tangier, like the fruit version of cucumber. G’ah. Why can’t I identify it.

ETA2: I figured it out!! :D It’s banana blossom. If you aren’t familiar with it, think like the inner peel of a very very unripe green banana, with a little more floral/musky tone floating above. Yes! That’s it!

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 0 min, 15 sec
Courtney

Fast shipping!

K S

You have completely captured the beauty of a great Silver Needle!

__Morgana__

Sounds awesome. I need to try short steeps and resteeps with silver needle. I haven’t had much luck getting flavor out of them.

Anna

This sounds so lovely.

Flowery

Well, I had never heard of Shang before this review. Now pretty much their entire stock is going on my wish list!

Shang Tea

Thanks for the review :)

Flowery

So much for the wish list. I just found the discount code…now they’re in the cupboard. :)

Anna

Hehehe, good job, Flowery.

Shang Tea

Thanks for the order Flowery, enjoy!

DeliriumsFrogs

I’m drinking this right now… and boy oh boy did your tasting note nail it. I loved reading your words while sipping this tea (especially since I received this bit of tea magic from you).

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