Vietnam Wild Mountain Mist Silver Needle White Tea
Origin: Soui Giang, Yen Bai Province, Vietnam
Elevation: 1200m+
Dry Leaves: The leaves are fairly typical of Silver Needle teas, although they were surprisingly crisp most Silver Needles that I have had has been very pliable and soft. Besides that for the most part these leaves are fairly uniform, I did notice the occasional fuzzy leaf, but for the most part the leaves are lightly twisted and have a pleasant pine needle smell.
Temperature: 176oF
Brewing Time: One Minute (adding one minute each subsequent infusion)
Aroma: Pine and Citrus
Flavor: Melon, Smoke and Vanilla
Tasting Notes: Wow. This is quite a strange tea, even though the packaging clearly sells it has a gentle smoke taste, I was not really expecting it; like the Red Buffalo, this taste like a purple tea.
I could see myself buying this again even though for 50g at $16 (at the time of writing) it is a little expensive; I have not encountered any smoky silver needles before. Normally I am not a fan of unscented silver needles, but those smoky notes make this tea really interesting. At first I wanted to say that this was my favorite of the three teas I looked at today, but I don’t often drink white teas and I always feel Oolongs have an unfair advantage over all teas since it has an incredible range of tastes; although the pricing isn’t that unusual, Teavivre has two silver Needles for $17.90 for 50g (at the time of writing this) of a comparable quality.
[The rest of the review is at http://rah-tea.blogspot.com/2014/12/what-cha-discover-vietnam-part-1.html)
