Introduction to White Tea

White tea is made when the tea leaf is simply picked and then dried, preferably in the sun. First the leaf goes through a wilting stage, where it is place in the partial shade to remove some of the moisture, after that is exposed to full sunlight to dry. After sun drying, the tea is baked to remove all excess moisture , resulting in the finished product, white tea. As simple as it sounds, the process is highly delicate. Traditionally white tea is baked in the sun, but since the sun’s heat cannot be controlled, a steady eye must be kept on the leaves to ensure that they do not burn. Since there is only one step to making white tea, there is not a large margin for error. For example, unlike Yan Cha making where if you mess up one step you can cover it up in the following, with white teas, if you mess up the drying step it is ruined. The best white tea is from Fu Di in the Fujian province. Zheng He is also known for making white tea, but has become less popular in recent years and has become also known for making red tea. 
(www.tea-drunk.com)

White tea is categorized by how and when it is picked. The four main divisions are Silver Needle, Bai Mu Dan, Gong Mei and Shou Mei.

Silver Needle: Silver Needle is the most sought after category of white tea as it usually uses the first picks of the season and is made up of just the bud of plant and no leaves. The bud is the most potent part of the plant and provides the mostly complex flavor and sweetness. A good Silver Needle is subtly complex, staying light yet hardy in its flavor. The flavor range is vast and include flowers, honeycomb, cucumbers, vegetal, honey, sun soaked cotton, and nuts.

Bai Mu Dan: After Silver Needle comes Bai Mu Dan. Bai Mu Dan picking still takes place early in the season, but is made up of the bud as well as the leaves. The addition of leaves cut the flavor a bit. When tasting a Silver Needle and Bai Mu Dan side by side from the same location and year, the Silver Needle will generally have a fuller more complex flavor while the Bai Mu dan will be sweeter with a lighter more refreshing body. Bai Mu Dans tend to have notes of flowers, nuts, honey and vegetalness.

Gong Mei: Gong Mei consists of the same picking as Bai Mu Dan but grows later in the season. As the tea season goes on, the bud of the plant shrinks and the the leaves grow larger. With Bai Mu Dan, the bud is still at a decent size, with Gong Mei, the leaves tend to outweigh the bud. This provides for a bolder flavor, but also results in a lack of the complexity, sweetness or smoothness as the previous two picks. Gong Mei is generally darker as well with earthy and woodsy flavor notes.

Shou Mei: Shou Mei is the last picking of white tea. Very late in the harvest the leaves are very large and there is very little to no bud. Often times when there is a white tea cake, this is the tea they use, since this tea is generally undesired and needs a gimmick to sell it. The least sweet of all the white teas, this tea is earthy, bold and the roughest of the three teas.

White teas are, in this authors’s opinion, one of the most underrated teas. They are often described with words such as light and delicate, giving them the conentation that they are a more or less tasteless or basic tea. The truth is a good white tea is quiet complex. I have tasted notes of honey comb, nuts, honey and flowers all in one tea. This misunderstanding comes from in proper brewing, bad tea, or that damn snapple commercial. (A topic of Wednesday’s first mini post.)

While white teas are soft, they are also very full. The Tai Chi of teas. They should have a round body with confident notes. To bring out these characteristics boiling water should be used. White tea is a big leaf varietal so using less than boiling water will yield a pleasant tea, and while this tea will be sweeter it won’t have the full range of characteristics that the same tea brewed with boiling water will present. 

Originally the white tea regions brewed this tea like a green tea, but the gaiwan is now the favored style. As I said before boiled water should be used and the steeps can start at about 3-5 seconds. White teas can go for a long time starting at 10 brews and going longer for the better teas.


Knowing the different types of white tea is important because they are usually sold under the wrong name. I have seen Bai Mu Dan being sold as Bai Hao Yin Zhen, and Gong Mei being sold as Bai Mu Dan. (this is very common). Understanding what the differences are and how to tell them apart will help you recognizing a false tea when you see one.

Introduction to Green Tea

What is Green Tea?

Green tea is the most pristine tea in China, with the longest history, and consistently selling for a very high price. Next to black tea (hong cha), green tea is the most recognized tea across the world. But what makes a tea green?

Compared to the other five categories of tea, leaves made into green tea are placed on high heat the soonest. After the tea is picked, it is let to wither to pull out some of the surface moisture. Then, the leaf is exposed to temperatures around 200 degrees celsius to kill the green. Most other teas also go through the kill green step, but usually not right away. (For example, in wulong making, the leaf is shaken first.) In the kill green step, enzymes working in the tea leaf are halted, preserving the tea in its current state. Since green teas go through this step the earliest, its leaf is in the freshest state compared to the other categories of teas, often imparting the most bitter and tannic notes, but also the most refreshing and liveliest flavor.

The four major subcategories of green tea all refer to how the tea is made

-baked green (Hong Qing), -steamed green (Zheng Qing),
-pan fried green (Chao Qing),
-and sun dried green (Shai Qing).

Each making style describes the step after the enzymes are killed, where residual moisture is removed from the leaf. Stir-fry green is the most well known style and includes famous teas, such as Bi Luo Chun and Long Jing. Stir-fried greens are usually stronger. Baked green is one of the most common styles and includes teas such as Mao Feng and Hou Kui. These tend to be softer and have a savoriness. Sun dried is very rare and is most well-known as Sheng Pu. While steamed green is almost unused in China, it remains the main method of green tea making in Japan. There is still one famous Chinese green tea that is steamed and that is En Shi Lu Yu. 

History 

Green tea has the longest history. The earliest writings mentioning tea are from the Han Dynasty (202 BC - 220 AD), when poet Wang Bao records buying and preparing tea in “A Contract With a Servant”. How do we know this is green tea? Well, for a long time, tea was a tribute item to the emperor, forcing strict regulation on how tea was made. It wasn’t until the Hong Wu Emperor that these restrictions were abolished and other kinds of tea were allowed to be produced. Thus, up until the Ming Dynasty, all tea was made in the green tea style.

Brewing Green Tea

When it comes to brewing green tea, things are a little different than most teas. Since the leaf is in its freshest state, it is the most delicate and susceptible to temperature. So it is common knowledge that you should use lower water temperature. To dive a little more deeply into water temperatures you should use different temperatures depending on the the type of green tea, taking factors like leaf size, tenderness and pick time into account. Teas that are smaller and picked earlier are more tender and should use slightly cooler tempetures. A good example of this is Bi Luo Chun. Teas that are larger or picked later, like Mao Feng our Hou Kui, can handle a little more heat.

Another trick to brewing green teas that is less known is to not cover the leaves and they are brewing and to never completely drain the water. Covering the leaves as they brew traps the heat and bakes the leaf. Why this won’t completely ruin the flavor, you will lose the softer more subtle qualities that often separate an high quality tea from an average one. Draining the water completely will also have the same effect. Between each steep leave some water in the bottom of the vessel. Just enough to completely submerge the leaves and give them room to move a bit. This will not only keep the leaves from oxidizing, but it will also act as a temperature neutralizer so in your next steep you will no longer need to cool the water off as the water standing there will already do that.

In China though, it is common to just through the leaves in a thin walled vessel and drink directly from that; chewing any leaves that get into your mouth. This will make the tea strong and it wont usually last as long, but it is convenient for times when you are doing something else and just need tea. A good green tea should float when you first add water. (Exception being Bi Luo Chun and other rolled teas). If it sinks to fast it is the sign of a dead leaf. 

Judging the Tea

The flavor of green tea should be very refreshing and lively. It is once again the leaf in its freshest state. What is very important for a good green tea is come back sweetness. After you swallow the green tea there should be a sweet taste left in your mouth. This can be the key factor to tell apart a green tea and a yellow tea in a blind tasting. (They taste very similar).

When looking at the liquid it should be light. A light tea, such as green tea or unroasted Tie Guan Yin, should have a light. At the same time though the liquid should be lively as well. I always describe good tea liquor as giving off a neon like glow. Green tea liquor that is too dark or looks dead is the sign of a bad tea. 

 It is hard to generalize the visual apperance of green tea because their are so many. Hou Kui has a vastly different shape than Bi Luo Chun, yet both are historically famous. Usually though a sign of a bad green tea is leaves that are too large or that look spread apart. Green tea is most sought after in the earlier picks, when the leaves are young and tender. A green tea with leaves that are too big means that the leaf was picked later in the season and wont have the same complexity and sweetness as an earlier picked leaf. When a tea leaf has an unclear shape, that means that the leaf isn't as tender. When tea leaves are young and healthy they are tender and juicy. Tender leaves stick to themselves better during the making. (This is important when looking at rolled wu longs). A green tea leaf that is spread out with no clear shape means the leaf was not tender enough to maintain during making. This can be from a late pick or a bad terroir. These leaves are often bitter and tasteless.  The image below is from a company claiming to have Long Jing. See how the leaves are much too big for a Long Jing and have no clear shape. 

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Information
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