I Tried Little Veggie Silver Needle

When living in the tea region, diving deep into the local teas, sometimes to find the unique flavors you have to turn to an unlikely source…Tao Bao.

For those who don’t know Tao Bao is like amazon except bigger. In the west small companies have their own website, like the one you are on right now, while bigger companies sell on ecommerce platforms like Amazon. In China almost all ecommerce is done on a single platform, Tao Bao. This means that in the one place you can get traditional handcrafted tea or mass produced junk and there is very little way tell what exactly you are getting. That being said when you’re living in a small town and you’ve tasted the majority of the local shops and are trying to branch out Tao Bao hold the promise of some hidden gems.

Recently I’ve gotten into Gong Mei a bit. For clarity I mean Gong Mei in the new definition of heirloom varietals, aka little veggie tea. My interest started when I learned that Little veggie tea was not infact one varietal but a name for a category of heirloom varietals. While they are usually used to make leaf heavy teas, they don’t have to be. They can be made into Silver Needle but it’s rare. Seeing how none of my local shop had gong mei yin zhen, I turned to Tao Bao and sure enough I found some.

Now as I mentioned before you never quite know what your going to get when buying from Tao Bao. So while I ordered Gong Mei Yin Zhen, or heirloom varietal silver needle, I very well expected to get either a non silver needle tea or a silver needle using Fu Ding Da Hao or Da Bai, the two varietals used for silver needles. When I opened the package though, I knew for sure I had gotten what I was looking for.

The Needles were small, very small, almost half the size of a normal silver needle. This is more than likely a big reason why this material isnt turned into silver needle. Small needles, which is why they call it little veggie, makes the yield of this tea very small. Imagine how much tea you have to pick to get even one pound if the bud is half the size.

The dry aroma of the leaf had notes of apricot and cashews, but lacked brightness. White teas, Fu Dings in particular, are known for their bright flavor. Its a key aspect tea makers look for when making tea. This tea smelled alittle dull.

The first two steeps matched the aroma, apricot and nuts with some minerality but slightly dull in flavor. It reminded me alot of ZhengHe teas. I faintly recalled reading that little veggie teas are slightly more common in ZhengHe. I often describe the body of good tea to be like spring water and bad tea to be like lake water. This tea was like tap water, not quite as fresh as spring water but not as murky as lake water.

The brews held out like this for afew steeps, and I considered buying more of this tea to see how it aged when suddenly it crashed. Around the fourth steep the tea tasted like a mouthful of fresh cut vegetation, and not in the nice way. It was grassy, bitter and overly strong. After this steep the tea completely fell out leaving no flavor, only lasting about 5 steeps.

Needless to say that this tea will not go on the website, nor will it go into mystery boxes. While I’m not completely turned off of Gong Mei Silver Needles I am beginning to see why they arent very popular.