Fat & Hairy

That's how your top grade young white tea buds should look. But first, let me take you back.

White tea first greeted me as a peer. With twenty years in a porous Yixing clay jar, it was just a few years my junior but wiser in its patience and consistent change year-over-year. While it breathed and oxidized Shanghai's humid air, beneath the very floors it sat on, a tectonic shift was underway as China rose from impoverished communist experiment to economic power.

In the steaming, surprisingly dark liquid with a swirl of a misty white fog dancing on the surface, my mind did not connect it with tea. It did not smell floral or fresh. In fact, it was rather intense and heavy on the herbal, medicinal notes. I was blind-sided by its strength, its qi, which immediately knocked any creeping illness from the cold and damp winter out of my system. Indeed, there is a Chinese saying 一年为茶，三年入药，七年成宝. Throwing grammar to the wind, I'll just give it to you literally: one year tea, three years medicine, seven years treasure. Based on this standard, the tea had become both a potent medicine and valuable asset.

In the mid-2000s researchers at Pace University “found that an extract derived from white tea inactivated viruses and destroyed bacteria that cause streptococcous infections, i.e., strep throat, pneumonia, and cavities in teeth." Green tea, in particular matcha, has been commercialized within an inch of its life amidst talk of antioxidants, immune system stimulation, and heavy-handed dose of sugary (literally) hype. However, studies show that white tea not only has higher polyphenol content but also has a greater antibacterial and antiviral effect than green tea and "can actually destroy in vitro the organisms that cause disease." A compelling complement to white tea’s diuretic and detoxifying properties were recorded in “The Classic of Herbal Medicine”《神农本草经》, recorded 2000 years ago.

Being the least processed in the tea realm, I suppose it makes sense that it has the highest antioxidant count. The most traditional processing involves no direct exposure to fire, just the drying of young buds and leaves in the shade for a couple days, depending on heat and humidity. Nowadays though, some roast/bake baimudan leaves to finalize the drying and increase fragrance. The young fuzzy buds are the prize, so logically, a higher grade baidmudan contains more buds and younger leaves.

East vs. West

Once upon a time the world was a simple place. White teas hailed from Fujian, oolong from Fujian and Guangdong, red teas from Anhui and to a lesser extent, Sichuan. As though keeping the array of teas within China alone wasn’t dizzying enough, Western imperialist ambitions fueled colonialism, resulting in cash crops, including tea, being transplanted to Africa and other parts of Asia. Nowadays, your white tea could be grown in Malawi (Twinings), India, inland China, coastal China, or somewhere in-between.

If you do side-by-side comparisons, you will indubitably find that teas exemplify the concept of terroir just as well as wine or cheese. Today, I narrowed the geographic parameters to China.

Representing the East we have Fujian Province (home to famed Fuding, the origin of origins for white tea) and representing the West we have Yunnan Province (home of puer). Format will be brief, initial snippets with limited sommelier verbiage… what does wet hay taste like anyway?!

White Tea PK

FUJIAN PROVINCE

Baimudan (白牡丹)

Upon opening the sealed bag, I was greeted by a concentrated floral and wildflower honey scent. Delightful. Very drinkable. The descriptor 'sweet' does not quite convey the nuance and subtlety of the flavors here.

Silver Needle (白毫银针)

Strong nuttiness with a hint of savory balanced by honeydew notes that only emerge after contact with water. Muted floral notes. Slight astringency if temperature and steeping time are not monitored.

YUNNAN PROVINCE

Baimudan (白牡丹)

Robust and oh-so-very smooth. Not your typical delicate white tea with an earthier, sometimes savory thing going on that’s balanced by sweet undertones. Plucked from the camellia taliensis varietal native to the mountains of Yunnan. Same raw material as puer means enhanced mileage aka easily over a dozen infusions but without the astringency and bitterness that sometimes accompanies puer. Responds surprisingly well, for a white tea, to higher temperature brewing.

So…

As always with tea, "best" and other superlatives are very much subjective. Among the three above, my preference is for the Yunnan “Moonshine.” I call it moonshine because I feel it's illegally good... so smooth and complex and nourishing and barely processed. Not unlike, I think, Thoreau's feeling toward those wild New England apples from the days of yore. For the economically sensitive, more deals can be found in Yunnan white teas compared to the well-known and highly sought Fujian white tea.

When the Santa Ana winds—southern Californian's Sirocco—pass through, my hand always reaches for a brew of clean, refreshing, white tea. Perfect tea to ease you into a new day, hydrating and elegant. Best to keep water temperature under 82C/180F lest some astringency creeps in, especially with pure silver needles.

Just as people typically consume green tea that is young and in season, white tea follows in kind. But ever since that lingering first encounter with a singular aged white tea, I have been setting aside a stash to observe and taste as it changes through time and space.