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YIN ZHEN

Silver Needles

Yin Zhen is widely considered the best white tea in the world. Although it is expensive, it merits its price. It comes from a beautiful corner of Fujian province whose hills and valleys are carpeted with gorgeous tea gardens. The best Yin Zhen comes from the coastal counties of Fuding and neighboring Zheng He, whose mountains are steep but not high. Yin Zhen’s silver tips grow on the Da Bai (“big white”) tea tree, whose name aptly describes the plant’s large buds. The Da Bai plant forms fat buds, thickly coated with down. The plants need time to create these big buds, so the Yin Zhen harvest starts later than in adjacent green tea areas.

The buds are painstakingly plucked by hand. In the spring, in the mornings after the dew has dried, the hills are dotted with harvesters. Typical of the variation within many Chinese teas, every Yin Zhen maker makes this tea a little differently. Some tea makers dry the buds on tarps in the sun, others dry them on wooden slats in the shade, and still others lay them out on racks in temperature-controlled rooms. A few Yin Zhen makers lightly fire the teas after drying them, giving their teas the faint heat flavors of lightly toasted white bread.

Yin Zhen is just as charming for the way it brews. It is worth steeping Yin Zhen in a glass vessel to watch this. Instead of pouring the water over the buds, scatter the buds over the surface of the water. Sometimes the buds will fall right to the bottom, but in the best of times they will float a few moments on the surface, then tip their noses to hang vertically in the water. There they will sway gently, before falling to the bottom of the glass. As they unleash a pale green liquor, the buds themselves will slowly turn a dark sage green.

BAI MEI White Eyebrow

This charming tea provides an engaging example of the slightly more assertive, more vegetal flavors of white teas from the center of China. Bai Mei also captures the beauty of Chinese art teas, teas whose leaves are manipulated to form charming shapes. Bai Mei comes from China’s central Hunan province, where tea is an ancient art form. White tea has been made there—some would say perfected there—for centuries. The region produced small amounts of white teas during the Qing dynasty, but it was only in the late 1800s that white teas emerged from the area in significant amounts.

Bai Mei means “White Eyebrow,” which is a little what the large tips look like when they are loose. Bai Mei is handmade by skilled workers, usually women, who sew six long buds together with string, then gently flatten them out to shape the connected buds into flowers resembling plum blossoms. When submerged in hot water, the flowers plump up to release a delicate sweet brew with the faintly sappy flavors of a classic, refined white tea.

CEYLON SILVER TIPS

Ceylon Silver Tips is one of the few exquisite white teas now available outside China. Where Chinese white teas have a faint vegetal undertone, Ceylon Silver Tips is nearly all fruit, flowers, and sweetness. As its name suggests, this tea comes from Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon. An island south of India, Sri Lanka produces many wonderful black teas (see “Ceylon Black Teas,” page 153). In the tiny world of white tea production, Sri Lanka has more recently become the second largest white tea producer after China.

Ceylon Silver Tips has appeared only within the last few decades. It comes from an area about halfway up the Central Highlands, the high mountain range that divides the tropical island. Unlike the large operations in Fujian province that produce Bai Mu Dan (page 27), Ceylon white teas come from small gardens with wonderful names like Oodoowerre and Meddecombra. Only some of the plants yield the necessarily large tip. As a result, tea is produced in such small quantities that buying more than a dozen boxes requires significant haggling. The tea’s subtle citrus fruit and spice