The Harney & Sons Guide to Tea - Michael Harney [7]
What gives white tea these ethereal qualities? The bud. Where green and black teas draw their more robust qualities from mature leaves, white teas consist of incipient leaves called “buds,” or “tips.” If left unplucked, within a week to ten days this bud would unfurl into a beautiful leaf. White tea buds are plucked and “withered,” or “air-dried.” During the drying, they turn from light green to iridescent silver as the immature chlorophyll within them dies off. While the evergreen tea plant sprouts these buds year-round, the tips hold particularly delicious flavors in the springtime, when the plant sends out a flush of nutrients it has stored over the cool winter.
To help the buds mature into leaves, the plants furnish them with an extra shot of glucose, a sugar boost that makes the buds much sweeter than a mature leaf. To protect the buds from sun and bugs, the plants also provide them with a downy soft coating of tiny hairs called “tricomes.” These tricomes give the buds a soft fuzziness like pussy willows and can sometimes coat dry tea leaves in a fine pale dust. The downy fur helps limit water loss and may also deter hungry bugs from gaining access to the nutrients within. To further deter predators, buds also contain extra caffeine and polyphenols, a natural sunblock and bug repellent. White teas are therefore slightly more caffeinated than green and black teas. Their greater proportion of polyphenols may also make them healthier, since polyphenols act as antioxidants in humans. While we can hope that antioxidants help prevent cancer and heart disease, the science remains inconclusive.
Consisting only of buds, white teas are the simplest yet also among the most complex. Their sizable tips are a product of centuries of selective propagation. Buds play an important role in many green and black teas; harvested along with mature leaves, they give those teas refined sweetness and a softer body. White teas therefore provide a chance to sample an important component of tea, barely adulterated.
White teas have recently become so popular that tea makers have begun making them all over the world, most recently in Kenya. For now, however, the very best come from Fujian province in China and increasingly from Sri Lanka in South Asia. The coastal province of Fujian has played a crucial role in the evolution of tea. Both oolongs and black teas likely first emerged here. The famous smoky black tea Lapsang Souchong comes from the province’s Wuyi Mountains. Tea makers here have produced white teas in earnest only within the last two hundred years. When the British stopped buying tea from China in favor of their own gardens in India, the British demand for Fujian teas diminished. Tea makers responded with a concerted effort to develop other specialty teas.
We begin with Fujian’s Yin Zhen, or “Silver Needles.” Its perfect downy buds, round body, and pale, slightly vegetal sweetness make it arguably the finest white tea in the world. Next we will try Bai Mei, a charming tea from China’s more central Hunan province, whose buds are sewn together to resemble plum blossoms. Then we will sample Ceylon Silver Tips, a tea from the emerging white tea source Sri Lanka and a challenger to Yin Zhen’s throne. Though one of the newest white teas, Ceylon Silver Tips has a compelling charm to it. We close with Bai Mu Dan, another Chinese white whose mix of buds and leaves nearly qualifies it as a green tea. Bai Mu Dan will lead us elegantly into the ensuing chapter on Chinese green teas.
These teas are all so delicate, they brew best at a low temperature and for a short period: around 175 degrees Fahrenheit and for only two to three minutes. The water changes color so imperceptibly,