White Lynx - Yunnan Silver Needle

#adventageddon Day Five – 3/5

No jot notes because I wrote a summary on instagram:

‘White Lynx’ is fragrant and sweet, with notes of honey, orange blossom, sweet grass, meyer lemon curd, cream, and just a hint of straw!

Also, a thing that I didn’t say is that the dry leaf appearance is fucking GORGEOUS!! Plus, this tasted delicious and is the kind of white tea I would definitely purchase for myself.

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/B5twTYOgWHP/

I’m putting this one into my “tricky steeper” file; when it worked it was awesome but when it didn’t it was meh. I also never got it to fly through multiple steeps (over 2).

The perfect cup was nuanced- mellow hay and cucumber layered with honey, stonefruits, melon, and nuts covered with a light dab of cocoa- leaving the mouth full of something surprisingly equal parts fruity (sweet, melon) and savoury (pepper, walnut, and smoke). The hint of “spice” reminds me a tad of juniper and cedar. There is also a touch of something subtly creamy smooth, like rice or coconut water, or maybe almond milk. This cup pairs surprisingly well with a chocolate peanut bar.

On a bad day it tasted like burnt hay and astringent messiness. Fickle, fickle tea.

Thankfully for the sipdown, today was a good day. Teabento says steep at 80C or 85C and I found life was better if it was steeped somewhere in the middle of this range.

Steep Count: 2 + Rinse

(Sample generously provided by Teabento)

hmm this was fairly light in flavours and not like most of the silver needles I have mad in the past.

I got some hay notes, general white tea flavour, but not a lot of specific flavours that I can pick out.

Right into it – this smells like a dewy, honeyed nectarine dripping all over my face. It’s so luscious and full, I literally fell back when I stuck my nose in the bag.

Brewed it smells more like cocoa, nutty and with a hint of stonefruit.

The flavor is completely different piping hot over as it cools. Hot, (perhaps a bit too hot, I admit) it’s cloyingly sweet, like drinking pure honey from a fruit tree. As it cools, it gets multifaceted – we have honey notes, but strong nectarine still, some cocoa, straw, and back to the sweetness again. The final notes are more honeyed hay.

This is an exquisite white tea, and I’ll go out of my way to order it.

Thank you to teabento for sharing this tea with me so I could review it.