Jasmine Silver Needle

For such a light tea, this one has a surprising depth of flavor.

First, two shout-outs! One for Jon, for creating the randomizer that chose this tea for me this afternoon. Second, to Auggy, who sent me this tea from the wonderfulness of her heart!

I was in the dentist chair for most of the morning, which was pretty unfun. Half of the time was spent waiting for the dentist to even get to me. I spent an hour and 15 minutes watching Food Network. At least I know how to make peanut butter and jelly pancakes if the need arises.

That need is never going to arise.

So anyway, I popped open Auggy’s little baggy, and can we pause for a second and just say how pretty this one is? Fluffy, fluffy needles scented with a lovely jasmine smell. A very floral, perfumy smell, but still wonderful.

So I put a tablespoon in 6 oz. of water and waited quite impatiently for this to steep up. The infusion smells really light and floral, and it’s a very light yellow. I love the color of white tea in general. Probably the prettiest colored infusions around!

On my first sip of this, I was pretty surprised at the different things going on here. There’s obviously jasmine in full effect. In every single note of this tea, there’s some jasmine. More on the floral side than the juicy side, but very potent. Then comes some white tea notes. They’re almost drowned out by the jasmine, but I can somewhat pick up on them. There’s mainly that sweet nectar taste, and a very slight vegetal note that comes deep from within the silver needles themselves.

The only thing that bugs me a bit about this tea is the endnote. The jasmine lingers on the swallow, and sort of tastes a little… bath-product-like. Like jasmine body wash. Or something like that. This moment gives way to white sweetness, but it’s there, and it’s sort of disconcerting to me. The jasmine just manages to tip into somewhere overwhelming for a split second, before returning to a more balanced flavor profile.

I love how succulent and juicy this one is, and how surprisingly unsubtle it is! Definitely one of Adagio’s better flavors, without a doubt. It’s just that end note that has me a bit confused and perplexed. It’s like someone threw a cloud of fluffy snow at me and there was a rock mixed in.

Very pleased overall, though!

If I could marry a tea, it would be this one. My friend ordered some tea, at my incessant nagging, and this was one of her choices. I’ve never been more proud!
She of course got the first steep, but as it was my tea-ball, I kept the leaves. On steep 4, and this is still amazing.
Very light and elegant. The jasmine dominates, as it should, and it taste so fresh and floral and real. The white is playing an divine violin to it with its soft, rounded grassy tones. This is the sort of thing I been looking for since I became interested in tea.
This fair lady has won me over, and I will most certainly court her till I die.

When I saw that Adagio now offers Jasmine Silver Needle I was so exited as it is probably one of my top 3 favorite teas ever. Steeped it 7 min. @ 180°F
It is delicate and yet flavorful. The natural sweetness of this tea never fails to cheer me up! I could drink it by a gallon:)

Sipdown (114)

Am laughing because I definitely don’t have enough of this tea to make a decent sipdown. The last time I had this, I saw the amount of leaves and it was between one big sipdown then, or two smaller ones and I went with the latter.
Just enough for like… 4 or 5 sips of tea tonight? Ahh well. This is a tea that I love so much! I love anything with Jasmine; that’s what got me into tea in the first place! Sad to see it go, but that just means that I can go try other types of Jasmine teas from other companies :)

I’m having a bad day, so maybe I’m taking it out on this tea. But it’s not that great. It’s astringent and a tad bitter and tastes more like a green tea than a white. The jasmine is flaky and meh. I don’t know. I guess I’ll try it again and rate it then. I really wanted to like it. :(

One more log and then I think I’ll be ready for sleep. Ah, sleep.

So, here’s another tea that Lena sent to me and I can say with great authority that this is easily the best tea I’ve ever had from Adagio. The smell reminded me very much of the other jasmine teas I frequent – Samovar’s Jasmine Pearl and Harney & Son’s Dragon Pearl Jasmine – which makes sense because…they’re all jasmine teas. Anyhow, I took it to be a good sign and was kind of excited to see how this stood up because of the silver needle aspect.

Here is where things began to fall apart. The jasmine felt heavy, not light and singing. It was almost cloying and tasted slightly artificial. It definitely tasted very much of jasmine, but so much so that I was barely able to pick out the silver needle, and that may only be in my head because I was looking for it so hard. As such, it didn’t have any depth to the flavor. It was Just Jasmine! [Sorry, as I type that, I can’t help but think of Jack from Will & Grace’s one-man show. I wish I could emote jazz-hands.]

I’m very excited to try the keemun she sent to me, because Auggy seems to think very highly of it and Jasmine Silver Needle, though the review does sound rather critical, does slip me a bit of optimism. It’s difficult to get super excited about something when you’ve had something much better. It isn’t that the worser thing is bad, it just isn’t nearly as good, you know? Compared to the rest of what I’ve tried of Adagio’s it’s so much better, though, and so this is why I can see something shimmering in the distance. It could be hope.

This tea came from Jessica I think, I’ve got so many sample kicking around that it’s hard to recall who gave me what. The leaves of this tea were quite fuzzy and fluffy with silvery hairs like the tea’s names suggests. Knowing how high Adagio’s steeping times generally are, I reduce the recommended 7 minute steeping to 5 minutes. I think it was a good move as even now the jasmine is quite strong and I don’t think I’d care for it any stronger. It doesn’t have that soapy characterstic that some jasmine teas that I’ve tried have had (and that I loathe) and it’s a fairly natural-tasting flavour, though it’s just on the verge of being too perfumy – I like my jasmine to be a bit more subtle.

A very nice, sweet, jasmine white. Fresh hay and flowers. A little chalky as it cools, but very good while hot. The silver needles are much better than Adagio’s base white tea. I used 2 grams for 4oz water, have steeped twice so far.

ETA: Lasted well through 4 steeps, increasing time by 1 minute for each. For $8/oz, that’s… starting to get reasonable, but only just.

This smells wonderful (if you like jasmine, which I do). The taste is overwhelmingly jasmine, which I do not like. I’m just not sure that perfumes (flowers) have a place in tea, although many obviously disagree. I love to wear perfumes, but just don’t think I’m going to like tasting them. It’s kind of like wearing a scent and licking my wrist … wouldn’t do it. It would be awful, I’m sure.

This tea gets high praises on Steepster. Setting personal preferences aside, this is probably a very good jasmine white tea. I do taste the tea in this…it has a grassy taste (hmmm, I wouldn’t go out and eat grass either). And it is definitely screaming “heeeeeey, there’s jasmine in here”. I can see people really liking this, if that’s where their tea preferences are, but it’s just not for me.

Oh God. This is amazing. I was underwhelmed with the first sip or two, if only because I could only taste and smell the jasmine and thought the silver needle had been relegated to second fiddle. Turns out it kind of is – the only place I can really taste it is in my mouth after the sip – but this is still so good. The jasmine isn’t overwhelming at all, which I know a lot of people appreciate (though I dig strong jasmine teas). And that buttery, delicate silver needle taste.. wow. Wow.