Golden Sail Brand Bai Hao Ying Zhen

Well, it's cold, wet and rainy over here, plus the internet tea stocks are a little low, so I've decided to go for a slightly different tea available from the local shops. It's a white tea called 'Bai Hao Ying Zhen' (also known as Bai Hao Silver Needle) from Golden Sail Brand. This 'premium grade' tea comes in a foil bag inside a silver cannister, so it is most certainly well sealed. Advertised as having a "mild and refreshing flavour" with "rich sweetness", this certainly looked worth a try.

Brewing Instructions: 1-2 teaspoons of tea per 180mL of 85 degree water for 1 to 2 minutes. I've used a little more tea than suggested to get a bit more flavour out.

Leaf Appearance: Grey/white whole leaves with lots of fuzzy white hairs.

Dry Aroma: The aroma is powerful, dominated by very sweet floral smells with some mandarin in there.

Brewed Aroma: Floral with mild apricot and peach notes. The brewed aroma is very weak, especially when compared to the dry aroma, or even that of the wet leaves.

The spent leaves smelt fantastic - mandarin, and a peachy
jammy flavour all featured. Pity it didn't taste as good as it
smelt.

Flavour: This is quite a change from the greens I've been having recently - the flavour is very mild, and reveals itself over a short period of time in the mouth. Initially, you get a clean but slightly plain sweetness with a hint of apricot. Some astringency coats the sides of the tongue. After swallowing, light peachy/citrus notes linger, potentially with a very mild bitterness at the end.

Rating: 3 out of 5 - this only just made the cutoff for the three, but only because of that lovely aroma. Why is this a 'barely three' tea? The aroma of the leaves suggests that there's so much potential there, but it never fully carries over to the tea itself. Yes, I do know this is intended to be a very mild tea with subtle flavours, but the initial astringency (which remained even after cooler brewing) disrupts what should be a clean, vaguely floral initial taste. If you want something different, this may be worth a one-off shot, but I wouldn't recommend this to those looking for a fine white tea.