Ultra Rare - only 2% exported to the UK per year!
Jasmine Silver Needle tea is an exquisite masterpiece where the delicate art of tea meets the aromatic allure of jasmine. Named Bai Hao Yinzhen (白毫银针) in Chinese, this tea is a captivating blend of silver needles and the enchanting essence of jasmine blossoms.
Exclusively sourced by our founder's Brother, Jason Chen, from the secluded (and hard to reach) Xiangqian Village in Zhenghe County, Fujian.
The village has around 35 core workers who skillfully weave the silver needles with freshly harvested jasmine flowers; through a meticulous and natural production process, the tea absorbs the fragrant jasmine aroma, ensuring a harmonious fusion of floral and delicate notes.
As with all premium silver needle white tea, these greyish snowy needles resemble one another uniformly – a prime hallmark of a special white tea.
Tasting Details
Specification
Storage: Store in a cool, dry place, away from sunlight. Re-seal packaging between use.
How to Brew
- Use 1 teaspoon of leaves (roughly 3g) for each person for whom you are brewing tea.
- Use cooler water for YinZhen white tea; around 75-80 degrees is perfect
- Steep for 2-3 minutes according to taste.
- Reuse the leaves a further 3 times by simply adding more hot water.
Farming process:
Only the very light-green almost greyish-white coloured leaves which are covered with velvety downy fuzz (a sign of tenderness) are selected during white tea flush seasons. These revered leaves are not harvested if the dew has not evaporated or if there is frost on the ground, therefore it must be a cool sunny day between mid-March and mid-April). Furthermore, no purple buds (sun or cold burnt) are allowed in the sorting and the stems must not be too long or too short. Any damaged leaves caused by wind, insects, over-handling, or partially open are often rejected or classified as a lower grade.
The ideal appearance of this premium white tea is a leaf or two wrapped around a developing new shoot, which looks like a needle overall. These tips are plucked and segregated from the rest and then naturally withered and dried under the light sun before a painstaking process of further manual sorting to select the long velvet furry white needles. The tea leaves are not kneaded nor undergo fixation, which preserves much of the white hair on the leaves and gives the tea a relatively mild flavour. If mechanical drying is required, the leaves are gently baked at temperatures less than 35°C to preserve its maximum antioxidant and active enzyme level, the least concentration of caffeine and of course, its one-of-a-kind white tea character to spoil our senses.
