Aged White Tea – 1 year tea, 3 years medicine, 7 years treasure

Aged white tea. It's become a pretty popular style of tea amongst tea aficionados with many swearing that it's the best thing ever. From its wonderful satisfying and complex flavors to all of the purported health benefits that it's said to have. Now we're going to dive into this a little deeper looking specifically at an aged white peony tea that we've recently featured in our latest tea discovery box. But before I jump into it, please consider subscribing to our channel to stay up to date with all of our tea related content if you haven't already. It really helps us and I'll be forever grateful for your support. Now back to the topic at hand. So technically when it comes to white tea, anything that's five plus years old can be considered aged. So with the way that white tea gets processed, because heat isn't applied to it during the processing stage like when making green tea or some other types of teas, the oxidation that the leaves experience, it never gets completely stopped. And so this means that over time the leaves will continue to slowly oxidize, changing the chemical compounds and chemical makeup that's within the tea leaves. And so I think this, I guess at its most basic explanation, I think this is what happens when white tea ages. So in an attempt to dive into this a little deeper and find out exactly what happens when white tea ages, a study out of the Fujian Agricultural University, which was conducted in 2014, compared the levels of different compounds that's found within teas with different leaves of different ages. So they took fresh white tea leaves and compared them to a one-year-old tea, a three-year-old tea, and a 20-year-old white tea. So what I found was that for most of the compounds, such as polyphenols, caffeine, and amino acids, the levels of each were reducing as time went on. Interestingly, however, the levels of flavonoids increased as time went on. So flavonoids are a type of antioxidant, and it's suspected that the increase of flavonoids in the leaves is caused by changes occurring in certain polyphenols as the tea slowly oxidizes over time. That is, through the slow oxidation of the tea, these polyphenols morph into flavonoids. And so I'm not going to pretend that I know exactly what's going on or I can accurately explain exactly what happens during this whole, you know, sort of tea aging process, but suffice to say that these changes that occur over time, like I say, it does correlate to the flavor of the tea. And so when you compare, say, you know, a young, fresher, you know, sort of white peony tea versus an aged white peony, there are definitely a lot of, like, there are clear differences between the two. So younger white teas, like this white peony here, in general, like they would have, I'd say they have like higher aroma notes. Like it definitely smells a lot more floral, a lot more bright, a lot more vibrant, and has this kind of like dry grass, hay-like kind of note to it as well that, you know, that I think that I always associate with a fuding white tea from Fujian province. Now, flavor-wise, it's also very delicate, very light. And for those that like their teas kind of strong, like this is probably not the tea for them as it kind of, I mean, in some cases, depending on how you brew it, like it almost tastes like flavored water, at least to some people. That's the feedback that we get from some people that, you know, have tried white teas, like delicately floral aromatic flavored water. And I find that with a lot of younger, you know, fuding white teas, like the thing is, even if you kind of steep it for ages and try to intentionally overbrew it, it doesn't really go bitter. So overall, if I had to describe a white peony in sort of three words, it'd be delicate, aromatic, and refreshing. Now, let's compare this to a 2017 aged white peony. So it's still an aromatic tea, though the aromas don't seem to soar as high as the younger version. Like the floral and the dry grass notes are still there, but they're not as apparent. It seems like those notes have been replaced with something that seems a little sweeter, you know, almost sugar-like. And as for the flavor of this tea, it is indeed richer and overall sweeter as well. There's like this rich, sweet, jam-like flavor with just like that hint of dry grass, that hay-like flavor that's there just to remind you that this is indeed a white tea from fuding. Now, texture-wise, it's definitely thicker, much more mouth-feeling, and the flavors, I do feel it's a little bit more complex overall. And the thing with this tea also is that when you steep this tea for longer, once again intentionally trying to overbrew it, in contrast to the younger white peony, there's actually a little bit of bitterness that comes out here. I don't think this is a bad thing, like I actually quite like it when a white tea has a little bit of bitterness in it. I think it makes for a much more interesting and complex flavor profile. So in describing aged white teas, there's a Chinese saying that essentially translates to one year tea, three years medicine, and seven years treasure. So that is when it comes to white tea, it starts out being simply tea in its first year, then after three years or so, after the leaves have had a chance to oxidize a little, the flavors are said to become a little bit more herbal and always develop into something that's similar to a type of Chinese medicine. Then after a couple of more years, once it hits that seven year mark and beyond, once it has had that extra time of aging and oxidizing, it becomes a treasure. So with seven plus years of aging, not only do the flavors become more interesting and complex, but apparently a host of other medicinal benefits are said to appear as anti-inflammatory effects, anti-aging properties, anti-cancer properties, boosting the immune system, I mean you name it and somebody out there has probably said that aged white tea, it hasn't. I mean after all, it was part of the origin story of white teas. As the story goes, you know the original mother tree cultivar that was used to make Fu Ding white teas, it came from a hidden plant that was discovered in a mountain cave and the resultant tea that was produced from this hidden magical plant, it was able to miraculously cure children that were suffering from measles or chickenpox-like disease that was plaguing a nearby village. And so with such myths attributed to this tea and with increasing amounts of flavonoids in the tea as it ages, as you can imagine, as the age of the white tea kind of goes up, so does the price. So all white teas can technically be aged and there are a few different types out there. So for example, another type is like with this Serenity tea cake here, which was produced in 2019. So this cake is a Shou Mei white tea, so technically it's considered a lower grade of white tea when compared to an aged white peony and it's made up of predominantly older leaves. So you can immediately see it here, you know the difference in colour between these two cakes, like with the Shou Mei, with the Serenity, the leaves are a lot more brown, they're a lot darker and the leaves in general are also larger as well. And as you can see, there's not many buds in there, you know, if there are any at all. And the leaves kind of feel a little bit rougher. So compare this to the aged white peony, which is, as you can see, it's a little greener, like it's not a bright vibrant green that you get from a green tea, but it's not completely like dark and brown either. And you can kind of also see as you look through the cake, some buds throughout the cake as well. So flavour-wise, the 2019 Serenity, the Shou Mei, has some nice sweetness to it and a nice sort of thick mouthfeel as well. Aromas aren't quite as high and apparent as the aged white peony, but the flavours are still quite nice and quite sweet. Now when we compare this to the aged white peony, so this one, it does have more inherent, like it does have more depth to it, like the flavours seem to last longer on the palate. And just overall, the tea feels thicker and the overall flavour just feels more, it just feels a little bit more complex as well. Like there are quite a bit of flavour differences between these two and also like there's quite a bit of aromatic differences as well. And I don't think this is just attributed to the year or the age of the tea. And another interesting thing that many tea aficionados would swear by is that aged white teas are, it's the tea that guarantees, without fail, it can get them tea drunk. Given the study from the Fujian Agricultural University, like I'm guessing, and you know trying to correlate the two, like these anecdotal stories from tea lovers and this study, I'm guessing that it could be because or you know it could be because of the increased levels of flavonoids that are within the tea that I guess results in that sort of feeling of being tea drunk. At least there's a bit of a correlation there between the two. And I guess my thinking is that the higher the levels of flavonoids, the easier it is to get tea drunk. Maybe. I mean there's probably more to it than that, but I guess that's what I can see for now. In any case, what do all your tea lovers out there think about aged white teas? Is it a treasure that you absolutely love and adore and get your tea drunk without fail every time? Or do you prefer your teas to taste more like, well, tea as opposed to Chinese herbal medicines? Let us know in the comments below and don't forget to like and subscribe if you haven't already. See you guys in the next video. Bye!