Snow Buds (Xue Ya)

Backlogging. Sunday afternoon.

Three tasty steeps reminded me how much I like this tea. =)

But the more exciting news is why I no longer have to “ration” (tea really good, don’t have much left) this tea. My mom told me last Friday that she’d brought me a large tin of Harney and Sons’ Earl Grey for $2.99 on sale at William and Sonoma (it turned out to be an 8oz tin, which I will be splitting with grandma and her as that is waaay too much tea for just me). She told me she’d brought it about a week and a half ago and didn’t think there would be anymore left but that there was a lot of loose tea on sale. I happened to be going nearby the William and Sonoma on Saturday morning and thought that it wouldn’t hurt to look in case there was some left. Indeed there was! I got two tins of this one, Rishi’s organic Earl Grey, Rishi’s organic Emerald Lily, Harney and Sons’ Tower of London, and Harney and Sons’ Canton Green all for 50-75% off. Quite the exciting tea sale find!

1st steep: 3 min.
2nd steep: 3 min 15 sec.
3rd steep: 3 min 30 sec.

Well, this is a shame. The first tea since I’ve had since Monday and I suppose I wasn’t quite ready for it. It tastes funny. No, correction: I’m tasting funny. I thought I was enough on the upswing from the cold that has literally knocked me out since Monday to have some tea. But no. And to add insult to injury, this cup empties out my tin of this. Really wish it would have had a better send off. I can taste some of the nuttiness and vegetal flavor that I enjoy about this tea, but they just aren’t sitting cohesively on my tongue. Bah. Back to orange juice it is.

I recently discovered a wealth of Rishi tea in my local Wegmans, which made me really happy. I grabbed this and ran before I could convince myself to buy more.

This is quite possibly the strongest unflavored white tea I have ever had. The flavors involved are mostly light, but it’s definitely not weak. That could also be because I used a lot of tea [Rishi recommends 1 tablespoon per 8 oz. water].

It reminds me a lot of Ancient Emerald Lily, actually. It’s got the grassy, nutty, and roasty notes that I keep on talking about in a lot of these green tea logs because I lack creativity and an experienced enough palate to pull much more out of the flavors. The difference between this and a tea like Ancient Emerald Lily, however, is that the sweetness in this soars upwards – like that nearly sharp smell of freshly cut grass. It reminds me, in a way, of the high sweetness of honeydew melon.

In fact, yes. That’s the difference. Honeydew Melon : Snowbuds :: Sweet Corn : Ancient Emerald Lily.

It’s an enjoyable tea, and I think it could become a good staple tea for me if it weren’t so similar to AEL. In the battle between those two, I think that AEL wins out, though time and experience may change that.

I made this iced to take on the road today – using several steeps, 16oz of tea from 1.5 grams (about a teaspoon and a half) of leaves is a pretty great deal. Sweet, fresh, but also slightly toasty; not like roasted oolong toasty, but sunny-day dry grass toasty. Nice, and refreshing, and good at many temperatures. I think I slightly prefer it warm, but it was good chilled too.

No rating, for these Snow Buds were a present from a chum and there were complications to the gifting process. The wonderful teas were in thin polyethylene bags. One of them was a heavily-smoked lapsang souchong. The poly bags had absorbed the smoke, resulting in smelly bags and smelly contents for all the teas. I got the Snow Buds out of its poly bag and into a tin immediately. Then aired it out in a nylon bag for weeks at a time, but alas, the smoke will not subside.

Please pass this info along to other tea lovers. THE LESSON: Thin poly bags don’t keep aromas and flavors apart. Even very thick ones eventually seep. All it took for the damage to be done was a couple of days of co-habitation of the teas in a gift bag. Such poly bags are okay for storing tea for short periods, as long as it isn’t near any strong odors. Fruit, herb, smoke or floral — it doesn’t matter, all will permeate. Snack bags, sandwich bags and the tiny poly ziploc bags sold at craft stores are ideal for sharing tea samples but they make lousy long-term storage containers. They don’t even keep moisture out very well over time; the tea swells in size. Word.

Thank you GOD! Tonight when I prepared this tea, I was very meticulous. I pulled out the tea scale, thermometer and the spring water. I waited for the water to come down from 93 C to 85C (I live in CO, so H2Obp is 93ish) and poured the water into my vessel so the leaves floated for a bit before being completely submerged. As I was pouring, the aroma was creamy, like pie. Exactly three minutes later, I decanted and took my first sip. It was like dessert: sweet, smooth, like liquid candy.
I never want to run out of this, but I cannot wait to drink more tomorrow =)

It’s taken me a bit of time to appreciate this tea. Since I’m predominantly a black-tea drinker, Snow Buds organic white tea was a little too subtle for me at first, kinda like those hints my wife leaves for me when she wants me to do something.

Rishi’s description of the tea is very accurate. It’s grassy and has a sweet hazelnut finish. The grassiness reminds me a bit of a sencha, while the nutty finish is vaguely reminiscent of Rishi’s dragonwell (which is less smokey than other dragonwells I’ve tried).

If you’re a green tea lover and looking for something less caffeinated, perhaps in the evening, this is a pretty good find. It requires a fairly long steep time, however. Rishi recommends five to six minutes. Go for six. And since white tea is made from the virtually tannin-free buds, you don’t have to worry about the tea going tannic on you from the longer steep time. The never-steep-your-tea-longer-than-five-minutes rule can be damned with this one.

I found this tea to be not as interesting flavor-wise as Rishi’s Peach Blossom white tea, but if you’re a purist and want to taste a good white tea straight (without the peach and jasmine), this is the real deal.

Available by the ounce at http://www.rishi-tea.com and in 1.3 ounce tins (it’s hard to pack bud teas very tightly) at my local (go figure) Food Emporium supermarket, home to the very sweet, but dumbfoundingly unknowledgeable sales clerk. (Ah, to be young, cute and perky and able to get away with not knowing a bloody thing about what you’re selling.)

blah! not for me at all. I couldn’t help but think about urine the whole time I smelt or drank this tea. Looks like many others enjoyed it, so don’t take my word for it. I’m new to white tea and this wasn’t a great start :(

I really like Snow Buds. The flavor is very light, but there is a wonderful aroma. Great tea for a snowy, blustery day. Prepared using TasteTimer.

This is one of the first premium teas I picked up when I really started getting serious about tea last year.

The nutty aroma of the dry leaves comes through wonderfully at first whiff, and it’s a great lunchtime/afternoon tea, especially when paired with spicy Thai food.