Silver Needle
Silver Needle
Silver Needle
Fuding Silver Needle Dry Leaf White Tea
Fuding Silver Needle Grades
Silver Needle
Silver Needle

Silver Needle

One River Tea

Regular price $26.00 Sale

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Tea: Silver Needle (Yinzhen)
Type: Fuding White Tea
Harvest: Early March, 2024
Region: Panxi, Fuding, Fujian
Producers: Yuanming Tea Garden

Tasting notes: baked doughnut, honeysuckle, roasted peanut, sweetgrass, cream

Silver Needle is one of our all-time favorite teas, but not a tea we would recommend to beginners.  The beauty in this tea is in its subtlety, its consistency, and in its unmistakable Chaqi.  A session with this tea is conducive to a quiet, blissful mood, rather than an edge-of-the-seat rollercoaster experience one would get with a Dancong Oolong or young raw puer tea.  The Silver Needle has always been one of the most refined, exquisite, and alas, expensive teas available in the Chinese tea market, but one session with this excellently sourced tea should show you exactly why this is.

The dry leaves give off a heavy and savory nutty aroma backboned by its green vegetation, which when warmed releases sugary notes redolent of baked doughnuts and sweet overtones of honeysuckle.  When brewed, the leaves exude a rich and thick roasted peanut fragrance mixed with a little bit of sweetgrass.  The leaf aroma is anything but subtle!

The brew is a pale yellow gold thick with tea down.  On the tongue this tea is thick, but modest, in Chinese they use the term 奶香 or cream flavor to describe a tea like this, and all the while the sweet honeysuckle remains present as a dominant flavor.  Around the third or fourth infusion, the vegetation returns thickening up the mouthfeel and giving a boost of sweet pea flower fragrance to the cup.  

This years pick of Silver Needle is incredibly consistent and very early.  The buds are all very small, only a few centimeters in length, and as Qiu usually does, he has decided to leave the “scale leaf” attached to the bud.  This in his opinion (and ours!) creates a slightly sweeter Silver Needle than the pure bud versions.

Check out more of Qiu's white teas, watch our sourcing trip to the farm, and take a crash course in general Fuding white tea knowledge.

Customer Reviews
5.0 Based on 2 Reviews
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Filter Reviews:
A One River Tea Customer
CR
01/26/2022
Cris R.
United States United States

I’m embarrassed to say I’m just getting to this tea…

I’m embarrassed to say I’m just now beginning to drink this tea. In sum, fantastic. One of the most rich representative Silver Needles I’ve had in years. The first brew was beautifully vegetal, witch that Classic fresh “cucumber” like young camillia fragrance I often dream about. Second steeping begins to display the floral/green features as the color darkens and a subtle balance of tannin and astringency on the finish. This tea elegantly departs after 4 to 5 steeps, but even then leaves still provide a delicate lingering memory. Overall a beautiful tea. So glad I found this vendor. Everything I’ve tried from them is excellent, subtle, and delicately crafted. None of the teas feel overproduced or one-dimensional to fit a market profile. Brew Perimeters: 6-7g 180ml - glass vessel 70c at 45 seconds, 2nd 75c at 45 seconds, 3rd 75c at 60 seconds..

JT
09/07/2024
Jacob T.
United States United States

Sweet and deeply savory!

Had this with some friends in a tasting of 3 white teas and this one was the group favorite!