White Tea

Dry leaf smells like sweet basil, almost…with a tinge of mint underneath. The leaves are a fuzzy/frosty water/gray in color…

Wet leaf has a very vegetal scent.

It’s a very light and clean taste with a refreshing and relaxing sip all the way thru. D-lish!

The color of the liquid is a very, very light brown with a yellowish hue.

A really nice, soft treat. The liquor is very light, a little yellowish and clear. It has a fairly floral nose and some vegetal notes, almost somewhat like a green tea, but not nearly as strong.

It’s surprisingly sweet throughout the whole sip. You get a good amount of sweetness when it first hits your tongue, then it recedes a little, but comes back the strongest farther back in your mouth. It finishes nice and sweet with an almost buttery flavor.

It’s light, but at the same time feels like it’s coating my tongue (in a good way) which I think may be where the buttery flavor sensation comes from. A good white tea with some flavor complexity and unusual notes that make it stand out from other plain whites.

I’m confused. Delighted to the utmost extent, but confused nonetheless. I taste black tea maltiness, white tea fruitiness/mustiness, green tea nuttiness, and anxi oolong sweetness. Sounds amazing, right? But all of this in one cup? It makes my head spin. I think I will use this tasting note to sort out the chaos that this tea has caused in my mind and senses.

First things first. The appearance, aroma, taste, and mouthfeel resemble nothing close to a Fujian white tea made from the Da Bai Hao cultivar (many tea fanatics, myself included, believe that this is the only “true” white tea). The needles are shorter, grayer, and do not have the same mushroom smell. The brew is much darker than the pale yellow of a Fujian Bai Hao Yin Zhen brew.

And the taste? OMG, the TASTE!!! There are hints of oxidation: fresh bread, malty flavor, all indicative of a black tea. A certain saltiness tickles my taste buds, which is what Fujian white teas do. I get a hint of jasmine and umami, all of which are usually present in the highest quality oolong teas. There is even a shade of the nuttiness that characterizes a Long Jing. How on earth can a cup of tea incorporate all of the best qualities of every type of tea into itself? My mind. It’s experiencing growing pains again.

One thing is for sure. I cannot call this a white tea, not just because of the “fujian da bai hao” bunk that I believe in, but because of its inherent character. It is truly a unique tea that deserves its own category. It should be called… I don’t know… a royaltea?

Who would have known that Bangladesh would become a place that produces a high quality tea? Talk about “finding a priceless pearl in the poor.” I’m not just talking about the tea here. Teatulia is doing some amazing work on this 2,000-acre part of the world to create an infrastructure of community, equity, and sustainability. More information about this can be found on Teatulia’s website. They are really creating a goldmine in a land of rubbish, and I really hope that Teatulia’s efforts will positively affect everyone who comes in contact with the company. If they continuously produce a product of such exquisite quality as their loose leaf White Tea, and translate this quality to every product that they offer, then they will have no problem doing so.

Jack: (Second Steep for 1min) “It’s alright. It’s like what you would expect. A bit of melon.”
Jason: http://steepster.com/jason/posts/47407

Brewed in Tiny White Teapot

Thank you to TeaEqualsBliss for sending me some of this tea.

This is an excellent silver-needle type white. It has an abundant flavor that is slightly grassy but with strong notes of fruit and flower. I am finding it slightly stronger in flavor than a typical silver needle.

I am winding down now… and I like the mild character of this tea and how it calms me.

This I’s pretty good.

I think I’m making notes for the right tea…the photo looks like loose tea but mine is in pyramid teabags. I’ve never had anything from Teatulia before. I found this tea in the organic section of my local grocery store and thought I’d give it a try. It looked like it’s the only Teatulia tea the store decided to carry. I’m trying it brewed western style using the time and temperature recommendations on the package (2-3 minutes, water just off the boil) and also tearing open a teabag to try it gongfu style in a gaiwan. The package does not specify what kind of white tea this is but gives the description “abundant white flowers & peach blossoms with a nectarine connotation.”

Dry leaf fragrance is lighter than the shou mei and moonlight whites I’ve been gongfu-ing lately. I guess I can maybe smell something sort of like nectarine or peach. Maybe.

Western style: steeped about 2.5 minutes, I wasn’t sure how “just off the boil” they meant…most western style instructions I’ve seen for white teas suggest a lower temperature like you’d use for greens…I don’t know how accurate my kettle’s temperature readings are but I tried 180° in a glass mug that had not been pre-warmed. The brewed tea is a pretty light golden color. It smells less like actual fruit and more like how certain kinds of flowers smell slightly fruity. I get occasional whiffs of something that smells like cereal or some kind of grain. Not sure what that’s about and I don’t smell it in every sniff. Flavor is light but pleasant. There’s something fruity-ish, but I’d almost say more melon than nectarine. Aftertaste is more peachy. Some light floral in the background. Something a little bit green but it doesn’t seem like grass or hay to me. A little bit sweet. It’s all relatively subtle but there’s a decent amount of interesting things going on. It’s pretty consistent with my western style white tea experiences. It’s maybe not the fanciest white tea ever but it’s pretty good for a grocery store find and I’d drink it western style again if I’m in the mood for a big mug of tea.

Gongfu: contents of one teabag, 50ml gaiwan, water about 200°, super quick rinse and then steeps starting at about 15sec. The leaves in the teabag I used for western style looked less broken up than the bag I opened up for gongfu. Lots of teeny bits. A strainer probably would have been a good idea. Wet leaf smells really sweet with more of a vegetal green thing going on than I had with western style. I tasted the rinse because I’m weird like that. It wasn’t great. Made me worry the water was too hot. First steep definitely harsher and more astringent than western style. More of that green vegetal stuff than fruity or floral. Maybe too hot or needed to start the steeps shorter. Shortened the second steep by a few seconds to see if that helped. Nope, still kinda gross. Dropped the water to 190°. Maybe a little better but still not doin’ it for me. Dropped down to 180°. Better but still not good. I usually go higher temperature for gongfu than western style so I didn’t think I’d need to go this low or lower. I can’t go much shorter on steep time with this setup, I’m clumsy and it takes me a certain amount of time to put the kettle down and adjust the gaiwan lid for pouring. I sort of feel like I should experiment until I find the right temperature and steep time because this is probably a user error thing, but at the same time, the broken up leaf bits are a pain in the rear and I’m not enjoying this at all. I have too many other teas I think are delicious to waste time and energy on something that doesn’t smell or taste good.

Starting off with the tea with the least amount of processing and oxidation, good old fuzzy white tea. It is totally random if I will take a tea out of its bag if presented with a teabag, but I was feeling a bit lazy today and decided since teabags were made for convenience, I am going to use that ease of access. So, sniffing the teabag I get notes of wildflowers, fresh hay, a bit of lettuce, and a tiny bit of fruitiness at the finish. This is one of the more delicate white teas I have sniffed, giving it a steeping brings out more of the honey and wildflower notes, it reminds me of a summer field in full bloom.

The tea is surprisingly dark for a silver needle tea, it has the coloring of a shou mei, which excites me something fierce because that tea is fun. Ok, tasting the tea, it is similar to a shou mei, with rich honey and fruit notes with a bit of earthy loam. However there is also similarities to silver needle with delicate floral notes and vegetal (I almost always pick out this specific vegetal note as lettuce) and a touch of sage. I have no qualms saying that I chugged this cup really quickly, and not just because I had just woken up and desperately needed some caffeine.

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-teatulia-tea-review-feature-part-one.html