A very rare silver needle tea variety - silver buds
I shared this on one of my tea groups and thought I'd post it here on my main journal as well:
I came across a rather interesting and rare tea this last weekend. Most tea drinkers here are familiar with silver needle whites, but how many have seen or tried the silver buds that come from full-grown tea trees? I'd seen pictures of silver buds from online tea chat groups, where people argued if they were truly from a camellia sinensis tea tree, since they look so very different from silver needles from younger bushes -- they're yellowish and have overlapping layers of leaves that look a bit, well, like something that fell out of a pine tree.
At The Best Tea House though I saw a small bag of these behind the counter and asked the owner about them. He said they were not for sale, the bag was part of his personal tea collection. Seeing my disappointment though he gave us about 10 grams of the buds, enough for a couple of servings.
I was expecting the flavor to be very similar to silver needles -- mild, sweet, and slightly hay-ish. It did have those qualities, but it also had a little bit of the fruitiness of a white peony (bai mu dan) and a certain fragrant eastern spiciness that my wife and I spent a good ten minutes trying to describe. The best I came up with was clove and cork incense, and my wife finally described it as Cherry Bark root, somewhat similar to raw mallow root. Intriguing!
Below are some pictures of the steeped leaves next to their unsteeped counterparts, and some standard silver needles next to it for comparison. The unbrewed leaves look completely different, but once brewed the similarities start to show:
A close-up of the brewed silver buds:
And a close-up of the standard silver needles for comparison:
By an odd chance I just found a link to a tea vendor in Yunnan that sells these. I've bought other tea from them before; their prices are incredibly cheap but the shipping from China is a killer (it almost doubles the price). http://www.tuochatea.com/loose_leaf_tea/wild_tree_bud.htm
I came across a rather interesting and rare tea this last weekend. Most tea drinkers here are familiar with silver needle whites, but how many have seen or tried the silver buds that come from full-grown tea trees? I'd seen pictures of silver buds from online tea chat groups, where people argued if they were truly from a camellia sinensis tea tree, since they look so very different from silver needles from younger bushes -- they're yellowish and have overlapping layers of leaves that look a bit, well, like something that fell out of a pine tree.
At The Best Tea House though I saw a small bag of these behind the counter and asked the owner about them. He said they were not for sale, the bag was part of his personal tea collection. Seeing my disappointment though he gave us about 10 grams of the buds, enough for a couple of servings.
I was expecting the flavor to be very similar to silver needles -- mild, sweet, and slightly hay-ish. It did have those qualities, but it also had a little bit of the fruitiness of a white peony (bai mu dan) and a certain fragrant eastern spiciness that my wife and I spent a good ten minutes trying to describe. The best I came up with was clove and cork incense, and my wife finally described it as Cherry Bark root, somewhat similar to raw mallow root. Intriguing!
Below are some pictures of the steeped leaves next to their unsteeped counterparts, and some standard silver needles next to it for comparison. The unbrewed leaves look completely different, but once brewed the similarities start to show:
A close-up of the brewed silver buds:
And a close-up of the standard silver needles for comparison:
By an odd chance I just found a link to a tea vendor in Yunnan that sells these. I've bought other tea from them before; their prices are incredibly cheap but the shipping from China is a killer (it almost doubles the price). http://www.tuochatea.com/loose_leaf_tea/wild_tree_bud.htm