Snow Sprout

So cozy!

I’ve only got 5 more teas left to try in the GM sampler, which makes me sad. Somewhere down the line, I’m definitely going to need to order more of their stuff, since it consistently falls above average for me.

Snow Sprout is pretty. Upon opening the packet, it sort of smells like a musty honey smell. With lots of sweetness. Maybe sugared flowered? Anyway, The leaves look like green Silver Needle! Very odd, indeed. They’re fuzzy, and slender, but… they’re not silver. They’re a pale green. Sea green, almost.

Anyway, I steeped up the entire packet of this, because it was around a tablespoon or so, and watched it steep. Funnily enough, once the water hits the leaves (or sprouts? What do I call these guys?), they look like twigs. Knobbly twigs. Very intriguing, indeed.

Anyway, this one steeps up to a very light cup. If someone handed me this, I’d automatically assume it’s white tea. It even smells like a white tea, in that it’s not very interesting on the nose. But does it taste like a white tea?

Yes, yes it does. WEIRD. There isn’t much of a body to it, and the tastes are kind of fuzzy, but here we go, trying to draw some tasting notes out of this puppy. It’s very subtle, like a white tea. For one, I’m getting almost nuttiness at points. I’ve narrowed it down to macadamia nuts! Yes, it’s that sort of nuttiness. There’s a sweetness at the end. It’s more of a green sweetness than a white sweetness. I can’t really explain that; I think it’s only if you’ve experienced the two you’ll be able to tell the difference.

Other than that, I’m not getting much else. It’s definitely a yummy cup of tea, but I don’t think it’s that memorable. For what it is, though, it tastes pretty good!

This is a tea that I ended up getting an ounce of for free with my Golden Moon order because they mistakenly shipped me this tea instead of the tea I ordered. So I figured I would try it!

It is a confusing tea. Golden Moon initially called it a green tea, then changed their website info to a white tea. Other Snow Sprouts are typically classified as green teas, but they are the downy buds that look just like white tea. Not to mention taste like white tea. So yeah, confusing.

Hayish, nutty, a bit bready. Yup, tastes like a white tea. It’s not too exciting (to me) but I’ll try to keep it in rotation so I drink it up before it starts to lose flavor.

This elegant dry leaf brews up to a somewhat lackluster tea. I have tasted green teas that had tons more character and I’ve even had white teas that offered more.

I think, however, that the problem is ME and not Golden Moon. I’m one of Swift’s over-sized Brobdingagians in my taste and my temperaments. I like the huge big bow-wow and Snow Spout is like one of those delicate tiny humming-birds: blink and you don’t see it. I think that lovers of green tea might like this a lot and it’s worth trying for lovers of white tea.

I’m thinking of Stevie Smith’s charming couplet:
“That Englishwoman is so refined,
She has no bosom and no behind.”

This tea has got no bosom, no behind, but it is most certainly refined.

I had a nap earlier, which means my brain is pretty worthless right now. Decided to have some of my GM samples in the ever popular endeavor of cleaning out my tea pantry so I can order some tea.

This smells pretty. Sweet. Nectar-y maybe? Not floral, but sweet and not really fruity but maybe not… thick enough to be nectar. Faint honey? Something. Eh. It smells good.

Brewing, it smells a little musty, dry and sweet. Not bad. Not concerning. Seems nice. It’s very light in my cup and I can’t really get much smell from it. But sipping it is quite nice. Sweet with a little of the musty taste that I smelled when in the pot. As it cools, the sweet musty taste turns mostly just sweet with maybe a hint of hay or something… . No briny taste, no real vegetal taste. Just delicate sweetness and flavor. This makes me think of a sweeter version of Rishi’s Snow Buds. But softer and less like a green (which is ironic because this is considered a green and Snow Buds is considered a white but there you go).

Anyway, good stuff. Like it a lot. Sweet, delicate, gentle but flavorful. I’m a fan.

These leaves steeped the lightest colored brew I’ve ever drank, at least for a green tea. I love the lightness of this tea. The flavor is light and sweet and the lightest hint of sweetness to it. I hope to try others of this type down the road. Quite the enjoyable cup.

Oh GM sampler, I have not forsaken thee! I just get distracted by other shiny teas. And puppies. Fwuffie puppies!

This simple tea called my name tonight. Yup. Simple and serene. Not quite yawn, but close. The packet smelled like…wait for it…wait for it…white teeeeea!

Maybe Shakespeare is spoiling me with awesome flavors and it was unfair to have this tea amongst such epic tastes. But I definitely still like subtle teas. Subtletea? (Yeah, I’m thinking that’s been done many-a-time, but I can’t resist teh cheez).

The taste is nice and white tea-ish. But there is the ever-so-slight hint of sweetness. It’s like a tiny powdered sugar fairy sneezed on the leaves. Pleasant aftertaste. Nothing remarkable and I don’t plan to buy more. NE

Sipdown no. 7 of March 2019 (no. 42 of 2019 total, no. 530 grand total).

Looking back at my original note on this, it’s clear to me I was trying very hard to taste things in this tea that would make me like it and also make me feel as though I understood white tea. And maybe I did taste all of those things and all these years later, the tea has lost flavor which explains why I didn’t taste those things in the tea I just sipped down as a take it to work tea for the past week or so.

If I was rating this now based on my most recent experience, I’d rate it somewhere in the 60s because I really taste very little in this that makes it distinguishable from hot water.

But I hesitate because I can’t say for sure that when I wrote that first note, the tea I tasted was fresh and that made a difference.

Anyway, it’s gone now.

My stomach was not quite ready for the holiday food that I had yesterday. I feel awful today. Today’s tea is all about recovering a sense of balance. Golden Moon calls this the most gentle of green teas, and gentle sounds reeeeeealy nice.

Maybe two minutes was too short of a steep, because I am getting barely anything – hot water with the faintest…I don’t even know how to describe it. Hay? Not really grass, definitely not floral… Even though it’s not firecrackers or revelations, it’s very nice for a queasy tum.

Steep 2, 3 minutes: string beans!!! Again, very light. Strangely enjoyable in a “tonic” sort of way.

Steep 3: lighter string beans. Still comforting, but I think this is it for these leaves.

I enjoyed the second steep the most. It really did help settle my stomach and I liked drinking string beans a lot more than I liked drinking asparagus :) I won’t be buying a tin of this, but I’d be into trying snow sprout from some other tea companies. It’s a really nice tea for when you need to tilt the scale a little more to the wholesome side of things.

Doulton ‘s review1 of this tea pretty much sums up my feelings. I had to really work to enjoy this. I opened the packet and inhaled. The fragrance is light, fresh, green, very subtle. Not green like freshly cut grass, but green like young. When steeped, the fragrance is a bit stronger, but not much. The flavour is like the fragrance. I felt kind of bad drinking it, really, as if by leaving it in my cupboard, it’d continue to mature: so, little tea, what would you like to be when you grow up? I’m thinking my palate’s just not sophisticated enough for this one.

1 http://steepster.com/Doulton/posts/39590

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #31
Well, this is it, the last one. I’d been kind of avoiding finally drinking the last sample because that would be the end, and it made me sad. But I guess that now I have my 52teas order to look forward to (and my Matcha!) so I will not be pining for new things to distract me from the teas I have for too long. Of course, this also means that I can get down to the business of getting the teas that I was particularly impressed with, but, alas, Ewa’s Pocketbook dictates that this must wait. In fact, my Golden Moon order must compete in line with: samples from Harney & Sons, the teas I decided on from my Upton samples, AND replenishment of some Adagio teas I am running low on. So who KNOWS when I’ll get around to them.

But let’s talk about this tea. The leaves were very light and smelled almost sweet, which was intriguing, but unfortunately I think I used too much water, because the taste is very faint and doesn’t have the sort of “full” quality that teas with a naturally light taste have when brewed properly. The liquid is very light, a pale brownish yellow almost verging on tan. Not quite the same color as white tea though. It’s somehow…greyer, if that makes sense.

The taste, light as it is, is a delicate sweetness and a very light generalized vegetal taste. The longer it steeps the more hay-like it gets, but I’m not really noticing any of the herbal notes that the description talks about. It’s certainly pleasant enough, but I like my teas a little bolder. Okay, a lot bolder.

And that’s that. The end of the sampler! It was a lot of fun trying all of these different teas, and, to be perfectly honest, I DO still have some left over samples that happened to have slightly more leaves in them. I do wish the packets were slightly larger, so I could try each of these teas two separate times, or so if I accidentally oversteeped/overwatered/overanythinged a tea on the first go around I would have the chance to correct the mistake, but beggars can’t be choosers and the sampler is still a great value and great fun.

I take my leave of my Official Golden Moon Sampler Tasting with this reminder:
And in the end, the tea you take, is equal to the tea you make.
HAHAHAHA THAT’S STUCK IN YOUR HEADS NOW! MY EVIL PLAN IS COMPLETE