This is probably the best Silver Needle tea I’ve tried yet. I’ve found with these teas it works best to start with longer steeps than I would for gongfu with other teas, because they seem almost hydrophobic in nature. So something like 1m, 45s, 30s, 20s, 45s, 1m, 1m. They don’t seem to have the longevity of many other teas, perhaps because I brew them this way, but I find if I follow a more “normal” gongfu progression, the first steeps are light to the point of being flavorless and I don’t really end up with any good steeps at all!
I think this is one of the last teas I have from my first What-Cha order, which included the Discover Vietnam set – a wonderful collection of widely variant teas. I actually hadn’t opened this one yet, as the fact that it had melon in the description made me want to save it for last.
This tea was quite interesting – the description on the bag seemed an uncommon combination: sweet melon and smoke notes. I love melon, and generally dislike smoke, so I had mixed feelings going in. This tea is absolutely sweet. It seemed kind of like melon rind or sweet cucumber – not quite the sugary sweetness that would come from the flesh of a melon, because it had almost a tartness with that sweet flavor, which in part of my notes I described as almost citric.
So while it is sweet, it’s a tart sweetness, and this sweetness is also accompanied by prominent savory notes. Most steeps, this savory flavor was actually what I tasted first, while the sweetness came in more the middle of the sip and they kind of combined on the finish. I think the savory flavor is what was described as smoke, though it wasn’t the BBQ type of smoke I really find distasteful in tea. I don’t even think I would have described it as a smoky taste had it not said that on the bag. To me it was almost woody or maybe like a barnyard taste.
This was a good tea for sure, and an interesting one to boot. I’m glad I got to taste a bunch of awesome teas from Vietnam, and I encourage everybody who orders from What-Cha to give some of them a try. They surprised me with their quality and uniqueness (is that a word? I don’t know).
Flavors: Barnyard, Melon, Sweet, Tart
