Silver Needles ‘Icarus’
Winter is a pregnancy. Mother nature stores energy over Winter, and with Spring that energy is released into natures children, who blanket the land with green. If the children are allowed to grow wildly, they can use that energy from winter to become enormous trees with vast canopies. That’s if; if we as humans can pick the spring leaves at the beginning of spring, before that energy is used up, we can consume it ourselves and reap the benefits. This is the point of spring tea. Beyond having a delicate flavor, it has the highest amount of stored energy. That is, if you believe in all that.
In the past 10 years I’ve had 2 great silver needle experiences. They were both made by the same producer named Wei Weijian, and are on paper the same product, which he called ‘Orchid Fragrance’ not something I agree with, but I digress. The 2021 version was very primeval, drought in a forest, dewey morning in a wheat field, and sugar snap pea forward for the flavor. I’d have been fine with another vintage with those same notes, but this 2025 version is different in a very special way. It’s much more savory.
How it is that this tea smells like a platter of peking duck I’ll never know. The scallions, the chinese crepe/pancake, cucumber, hoisin/duck sauce, and of course the oily crispy duck itself. This tea is a liquid representation of the ideal balanced peking duck bite. It’s really quite something. Silver needles by definition are a young tea, and young tea doesn’t have much to say chemically, especially not without mechanical damage, oxidation, etc. None of which white tea processing allows for. I can only imagine how this will age.
Icarus, the name of this tea is in reference to the ancient greek myth ‘Icarus and Daedalus’. In this story Daedalus invents a pair of wax wings which Icarus uses to escape the island they’re imprisoned on. Daedalus warns Icarus not to fly too close to the sea otherwise the wings will get too wet and fall apart, and not too close to the sun, as the wax would get so hot it would melt. Icarus is incredibly excited to be flying in the air, flies too close to the sun, the wings melt, and he drowns to death.
The idea of this name came to me though a combination of its old i-ching related name, roasted duck, and the idea that the point of this tea is to offer a pure yang energy. Ultimately pure yang would be heaven, but this duck and us are mortals of earth. If we fly too high we’ll melt and fall to our deaths. Let that be a lesson for us.
1g tea per 60g boiling water, Steeping 2 minutes and 52 seconds.
