My Staff's First White Tea Tasting

Hey teaheads. Once again, we are here having an informal training session with Daphne and with Fran here, and they want us to talk about white tea today. So let's see. How much do you recall about white tea, and tell me your experiences with white tea? Daphne I know that I find it really easy to drink, and I like it. I find it kind of delicate, as opposed to like a black tea I would find a lot more harsh. Well, that was what I thought before we had all the black teas, but yeah, that's what I always thought about. Okay. And I've forgotten what white tea is. I did research, obviously, before I started working here, but it's totally gone out of my mind. So I'd like to get a bit of a catch-up. Okay. So the catch-up is that white tea is essentially taking the pickings, either buds, leaves, and there are different names depending on if it's buds or if it's leaves, and you're taking those leaves, and they're fresh, and you are drying them. But you're drying them in a controlled way so that there's a certain period of time, under certain conditions, where the white tea is transforming. It's mostly an oxidation process, but there's a transformation. So during that transformation, chemicals inside the leaf are interacting with each other, new aromatics are being created, new taste compounds are being created, new texture compounds are being created. So a producer has in their mind how much, and what kind of transformation they want to achieve from these fresh leaves. So they then need to control the conditions of storing these leaves so that when that correct amount of transformation is taking place the leaves are dry. So they sort of just cool over the finish line. When the leaf is dry then the chemical reactions essentially stop. They don't stop because the leaf is not being heated, so the leaf is still active, and the buds are still active, but it's slowed down to a point where you can now call it an aging process. Then it takes months, years, etcetera. If there's moisture in the air it will slowly keep reacting and keep changing, which is why white tea is suitable for aging. But what I have in front of me are four teas that are fresh, so unaged. If we were going to do an aged tea tasting that would be a different session. I call it the Goldilocks of tea because if you don't get the right conditions, if you don't get it spot on, and obviously it's dependent upon the pickings, how much humidity there was in the air when it was picked, the weather, all of these things. The producers are working with all of the elements to try to dial in the correct amount of all the parameters to get to a point where the leaf is dry at the right level of transformation, which is why white tea is actually more oxidized than green tea, because it has had more time to interact with the air and for all of the compounds in the plant to start to combine with each other and to react with each other. If you are a, like most producers out there, they'll work with the thickness of the pile of leaf. They'll work with temperature. They'll blow air through the leaves, and they'll pile it in very specific sort of troughs. Then they might send it through conveyor belts, which are slowly sort of different temperatures, so slowly sort of heated. They have a very sort of exacting way of doing it, so that at the end of the conveyor belt the leaf is dry and the right level of oxidation has occurred. However, what they're missing out crucially is the sun. The full spectrum light of the sun has a big effect on the aromatics of tea transformation. That's been shown in many studies, and traditionally all of this would have been done under the sun. What they'll do is they'll take the leaves, they'll pile it up, usually on sort of breathable bamboo mats, and they'll pile them in like layers, and they'll be looking at the sun, and they'll be moving the layers around so different leaves get different levels of sun. They'll be looking at the wind. They'll be looking at the temperature to try to achieve that transformation. Obviously that's a much more skilled process. It leads to much more variability in the batch, but can make much higher quality teas. When you're sourcing, or when I'm sourcing white tea, that's one of the things. You taste a lot of white tea which tastes good, but then it's just that extra difference that the sun makes, and this more skillful process makes with the tea. Does that make sense? Don't call it the Goldilocks of teas. Because if you underdo it so that it doesn't have enough transformation, or the transformation isn't sort of deep enough, it just feels too lightweight. If you overdo it, and you've kept the leaves for too long, and it's a bit sort of too hot, or too moist, then it's like gone too far. Finding that sweet spot right in between that perfect Goldilocks is sort of the skill of the white tea producer. So it's just right. Yeah, and obviously that is dependent on taste, right? Everyone's going to have a slightly different interpretation of what just right is. But as you said, Daphne, white tea is very delicate. It's a very, very delicate tea. It can be too delicate, or it can be taken too far, where it loses the essence of what makes it a white tea, which is purity, and that sense of dewiness. You want to taste like the land, still. You want to taste like dew. It needs to have sort of a purity to it, but still have enough character to it. It's a very interesting one, white tea. A lot of people who drink white tea, when they first drink white tea, they're like, this is sort of just like slightly coloured water. It doesn't really have much to it. I've got lots to say about that. We'll dive into the tasting of this. I know that this tea type can be a bit of a struggle for people to understand, especially considering the fact that oftentimes it's quite expensive. It's sort of like one of those things, if you're spending a lot of money you kind of expect to be hit with like this big experience. But the whole joy of white tea is the subtlety of the experience. Within that subtlety you want to be able to tease out that it was made in a really great way. So let's look at these leaves. All right. I'm going to give you the brief rundown, and the reason I'm giving it to you is because I don't think it's going to influence you too much in terms of tasting, because you don't really know much about it. But these two are from Fujian province, and these two are from Yunnan province. So these are two different provinces. Now Fujian province is considered to be like the original province for white tea. So this is sort of original white tea, and these ones are more like, let's call them, newer school white teas. Right? Because white tea popularity over recent years has taken off, so a lot of provinces are making white tea. Do you want to describe them? Take a look at them? Celine- Very. Donald- Very. Celine- It's like it's got little hairs. Donald- Right. So those are trichomes, and they're like little hairs that are on the bud. They have a few different purposes. Some of them are for aromatics, but mostly it's for protection against bites. So you sort of create this furry texture. You see that with most plants, right? Most buds have a furry sort of velvet note to it. So you've got buds here, which this is buds only. One jumped across. Oh, it's lost. They've decided to have fun together. All right. So buds here. This is buds, and you can see some leaves. So this is called white peony. This is called silver needle, for obvious reasons. Silver needle, white peony. These are the very common styles of white tea that you'll see on the market. White tea is kind of unique because it's named after its picking style. It's more complicated than that, but let's just start with that. You can see that the silver needle is white peony, but obviously there are thousands, tens of thousands of different grades of silver needle, and tens of thousands of different grades of white peony. White peony can be even more leaf, less bud, so it's sort of just whatever. It's just a mix. Then you've got Shou Mei, which is just leaf, no buds, or very few buds. Okay? Right. Let's look at the difference between this one and that one here. Describe the difference. Celine? Well I've just never seen tea like this. I love how it kind of rolled up. The far left one is. Yeah. This one here is buds as well, but it's buds from the big leaf tea tree, and it's very early spring, late winter buds. These are the buds that would turn into branches. These are the buds that turn into leaves. It obviously looks different because of the fact that it's going to make a different part of the plant. This one looks, I guess, most similar to white peony, but you can see it's got a very black leaf, right? This is called Moonlight White, and this one is produced indoors, so it doesn't see the sun. That's part of its whole thing. It's an indoor wither that's called Moonlight White because it never sees the sun. Some people say that it's Moonlight White because they go and pick it at night. That does sometimes happen, but very rarely. Most Moonlight White, it just means that it's all processed indoors, and that's the look they go for. This sort of very sort of antique silver, and black leaf. So romantic. All right. Where are we going to go first? I think what we'll do is we'll go with a white peony first, just because it's sort of, I guess, the most sort of full-balanced experience of a white tea. Hopefully this water is hot enough, and we can have a smell. Okay. So now, describing the smell. It's difficult, especially with something like white tea where it really smells of nature. Celine- Yeah. Custard creams? Don Oh, okay. There you go. Yeah. It definitely has a creamy quality to it, for sure. Custard creams. It's a childhood biscuit of mine. It definitely smells of nature. I feel like I need to smell other teas to get a reference there. Okay. So I think that some of the common flavour notes, or aromatic sort of profiles that you will commonly sort of hear people talk about is a sense of creaminess, right? But also a sense of sappiness, like nature's sap. Like dew, or like floral sort of nectars, like those kinds of things. But also some hay as well. So some sort of dried grass quality to it as well. They sort of mix well together. If you think about it, like hay and custards like that, because it has that interesting combination of that warmth. So what you're smelling here is the sun. Can you smell, in a way, like I'd like you to really try to understand what the sun-withered smell is. It has that very natural, like dried hay quality to it that you wouldn't get if it was conveyor belt white. I'm actually getting that kind of custard cream. So warmth is what you want. I think if you're looking for like the words to describe what you're looking for in a white tea, what I'm looking for is warmth. I don't want it to be just sort of nectar-y and fresh tasting. I want it to have a warmth to it. Now white tea, because of the fact that they are mostly buds, or at least a lot of buds, buds take a long time to infuse. So we infuse white teas much longer than we would like black tea. We can throw even more in and infuse short amounts of time. A lot of people will just leave the water in and just sort of keep sipping and filling water on top if they did it in a glass. But we're going to brew it this way. And yeah, so it tends to be a longer brew. All right. The colour of the liquor is very light. All right. Cheers. It tastes quite creaky. Mm-hmm. What do you mean by creaky? Well, first it tastes fresh. Mm-hmm. Light. Light. Yeah. I keep getting that. Yeah, and almost like vegetal in a good way. You know when you get a water that's like the cucumber mint infused water? Something refreshing and light like that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. But I also pick up the warmth of like nougat. Like there's a sweet, creamy, nutty warmth in it too, that I think is really an important part of the appreciation of white teas. Do you think it comes through more with further infusions in the first, or do you think right now is the time where it's... No, you're going to get it. It will keep developing, but it is pretty clear from early infusions as well. All right. Let's see. Go for it. I'm going to give Cup something. I mean the cat. It does remind me of soup. Soup? Yeah. What kind of soup? I guess because I'm looking at it as well. I'm looking at how that... That reminds me of soup. Okay. What kind of soup? Chinese soup. You know, lots of like... They put lots of herbs in. Like, um... Yeah. Roughy ones. But with like forage herbs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But see, for me, it's not that green. It's not as green as like... I don't know. It doesn't have a greenness to it. It's more nectary. It's more dewy to me than green. Are you getting a lot of green? When I'm drinking it and just swallowing it as a normal drink, like as if I were drinking water or something, I'm getting the green. But now I started doing like a... Going like... Yeah. You know what I mean. Anyway. And I'm getting more of that... A bit more stew. Yeah. Not as green. I mean, this is... You can see the color of the actual buds. They have gone quite green, right? But it's still got developed flavor in terms of that... The sweeter and the creamier notes of it. Yeah. All right. So what we're going to do is compare that to... I'm going to taste a bit more of this, and then we're going to compare that to the Yunnan. So now we're going to taste this, and then we're going to taste the Yunnan, really like white, and see how the different province affects the smell. Yes. I can't pick up anything in specific, but it smells nice. I'll give you a try and think. Oh, it's different. Yeah. Coming up with the notes is an exercise in freeing your mind rather than fixing your mind. So thinking about it isn't going to help. It's got to be more just off the cuff. And being unafraid to say something stupid. I don't know what I'm thinking. Like, cuff mixture. Cuff mixture. Okay. I don't know. There's something kind of medicinal. Okay. That's what I'm getting. All right. One more smell over here. Cherry. Okay. I get what you mean. The cherry. Yeah, I think that cherry. Some other fruit that I can't really think of. Like cranberry? Like it's a bit tart. Yeah, tart. Yeah, it's a tart fruit. It's not a very sweet fruit. Yeah. Definitely some cranberry in there. Definitely some cherry. Definitely medicinal. It's also got a touch of like naphthalene, which is like mothball quality, you know? Which again, I don't think that we should assign whether or not something is a bad smell or a good smell. I actually really like the smell in a small amount of like that mothball naphthalene smell. It has a certain sort of reminiscent to me of my grandmother and stuff, you know? Okay. There's something familiar about this. I can't put my finger on it, but I have smelled this before. Yeah. I love how beautiful it looks. Yeah. I believe. And you can see the buds are much bigger, right? Because we're talking about bigger plants just in general. And this hasn't seen the light of day. Not since it was picked, no. So yeah. This is Yunnan. And you know Yunnan is hotter, more tropical. And so the flavor notes change, you know? The aromatics change. They become a little bit more ... you wouldn't describe them as much as the first one. The delicacy is definitely sort of higher in the Fugentis, right? These are a little bit more ballsy. They're a little bit more out there. And again, some people really love the refinement of the Fujian white tea. Some people like the more sort of in-your-face nature of the Yunnan white tea. So that's just a matter of preference. You can see the color of the liquor looks darker, right? Right. Okay. Have a taste. Yunnan Moonlight White. More of a honeyed note as well, like a fruit honey. I think I prefer this one over the first one. I'm getting an umami kind of vibe to it as well. Are you also picking up a little bit more of a black tea taste to it? You know how black tea can have that sort of slightly sort of dried mint and malt note to it? Mint's interesting, actually. There's a minty quality to this tea, isn't there? A dried mint rather than a fresh, maybe. I don't know. And a honeyed note to it as well. So it's definitely got, in terms of intensity, you've got a higher intensity of aromatics in flavor, but they're very different from Fujian. We're going to go back to Fujian for the next tea, so you can sort of AB them a bit. Also, I think, a little bit more physical in the mouth. It's got a little bit more quench to it. Again, it's a preference thing, or how you're feeling at the time. Maybe you feel like something that's very smooth, and soft, and supple, and has less of that texture. Then maybe you're going to go for a Fujian white tea versus the Yunnan. All right. Cheers. A touch of talcum powder. It's like that icing sugar, talcum powder, powdery quality, I think, to it as well. I like this one. It's like, you know, when you dust, you have powdered sugar, and there's a little cloud of it in the air, and you just sort of walk through it, and you just breathe it in. It's got that little powdered sugar quality to it. All right. Moving on. Heirloom Silver Needle. I would say that this is pretty much the pinnacle of silver needles. I am biased with how they float, because we have tasted so many of these silver needles. Okay. Again, warmth. I pick up so much warmth in it. Yeah. Like nutty. Yeah. I'm not sure what else. But it is so different from the first and the second one. Yeah. Yeah. It's warming. It's very warming. There's nuts. There's nougats. I think that there's like those custard creams, but they're a bit more baked. They're a bit darker. This has been charcoal roasted as well, I will say. But it's been charcoal roasted at body temperature for about 10 hours. It's definitely a biscuity. Yeah. It's biscuity. Like malt. So it's definitely got that warmth that you'd want from this kind of tea. Again, if it wasn't processed under the sun, and it wasn't charcoal baked, it would have much more of a sort of straight-ahead sappy quality to it. But you can see the buds are still going green, right, as they transform. Let that brew for a bit. About how many seconds would you say? Is it like 40 seconds? 40 seconds, I think. Something like that. Yeah. I mean, it depends how much leaf you bring. I didn't put that much leaf in here. You can do it for less, but yeah, I reckon something like that. It's funny, because brewing times, a lot of the times the teas that are more designed around lightness, you brew longer. You know? Because they tend to involve more of the buds, and buds just take longer to infuse. Can you imagine? Because a bud has got many layers, right? Because those layers are going to become leaves. So it's like stacked up. It's like an armoured shell. Yeah. So you need to give it time. Okay. Go for it. Elim Silver Needle. Texture is very, very syrupy. Soft, soft syrupy texture. It's not what I expected, actually. There's something a little bit sour about this. Can you speak louder, please? There's something quite a little bit sour. Sour? Yeah, not like a... Can you pick up sound? Are you thinking like bitter? Maybe better as... Sorry, let me try it again. Maybe it's kind of sweetness as well. There's sweetness. I would say that I pick up like it's sort of a little bit like maybe green apple kind of thing going on. I wouldn't say it's acidic, but there's like an aromatic there. Yeah. Nice, isn't it? Really picking up. I tried this the other day and I didn't like it. Oh, really? Why? I think it's just not my... I can appreciate it, but it's not my palate. Like I can't pick up the sweetness as much. Okay. But I think that's me liking things that are a bit more sweet when it comes to tea. Or a bit more... I've liked with this one and the ruby... What was the black tea that has the ruby? Ruby black. Ruby black, yeah. I'm kind of picking up that I like that kind of like cherry. Because that's very cherry, and ruby black to me is also quite like that. So I feel like this is just not the kind of tea that I like as much. But why not? What's the reason? When I tried it that day I said it's like veggies again. You taste vegetables in this? Yeah. What kind of vegetables? Tell me what kind of vegetables you taste. Like if a green bean hasn't been cooked. Ah. That green... Okay. Yeah. Like a green bean that has just raw kind of thing. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah, I kind of know what you mean about that. I would sort of say like, yeah, sugar snap peas and like green beans. Yeah. Sugar snap peas are a better one to describe it. Yeah. Yeah. See, I'm definitely getting that. As soon as you said apple, I'm getting that because I want to drink more of this because it's giving me kind of like a thirst for it. Right. After you've had an apple or eaten an apple. Yeah. That's what I'm getting from this one. Yeah. So I mean, you know, but again, it's closer to the original. I mean, the first can see how this is the same region. Right? But this one has, in a way, I think more intensity of those. I would say it's got a little bit more of the warmth of the nuts and the malt. I do pick up the sugar snap peas, green beans thing. I get that. But like it's not vegetable in the sense of like there are some teas that taste like, I don't know, cooked zucchini, or cooked courgette, that kind of salty vegetable. This is more like, yeah, that sort of bright, green apple, you know, sugar snap pea. I guess there are similarities there. All right. Last one. We'll go with this one here, which is Elder White. Okay. Have a smell of that. Oh, I love the smell. It reminds me of walking into Aesop, Aesop, whatever. Like a lot of well, when I think of that brand, I think of like vetiver, bergamot, those kind of scents, not their citrusy scents, but those kind of geranium. Yeah. It's kind of like, I can get that earthy, tight, soapy. Like a bit clean. Yeah. Clean and soapy. Yeah. Yeah. So this is a very different smell. Very, very different. I would also put pine in there. There's some sort of very pine quality to it. I would say there's that talcum powder freshness as well. I would also say there's a touch of like a pineapple note, but sort of in the distance, but it's like it's got that spiciness or spikiness of like a pineapple for me. But yeah, it's an extremely different smell. It's from Yunnan as well. So, but it again shows how crazily different you can have for different white teas. But this is going to brew much lighter and is much more sort of an aromatic based tea, I would say, rather than sort of a mouthfeel texture based tea. But let's see how it goes. Do you have any other questions about white tea? It could be a basic question, but how does it differ to black tea and green tea? Well, so green tea, once they pick the leaf, they will leave it for a bit to transform, but not much, and then they'll heat it up to stop that process. So they're actually like heating it to stop the process, and that's a big difference. Therefore, it doesn't oxidize as much as with a white tea. With a black tea, what they're doing is they're taking the leaf and they're actually rolling the leaf, so they're crushing it essentially, and they're trying to encourage as much transformation as they can. And then after it's gone through, that long period of transformation, usually they make it a warm room, humid, they really want to try and push it. They then will dry it. So it's just different orders of how much transformation you want to achieve, and then how you decide to stop that transformation. White tea is kind of unique in the sense that it's being stopped just by the natural process of drying. Okay, you can see how light that linger is. Super light. It's broader. It tastes the way it smells, which sometimes a lot of the teas that I've tried here, it smells one way and you're expecting one smell, and then you get another taste. I mean, you're expecting one taste from the smell, and then you get another thing. But this smells, it's quite forward, the way you're smelling the leaf. Yeah. It's got a little spiciness to it, I would say. A little bit of a sort of, I can imagine this working really well with that chili as a sort of combo, because it's that light, bright, little bit peppery, some chrysanthemum in there. There's definitely some pine resin, and you're right. I mean, it carries forward that aroma into the cup. Yeah. It's kind of peppercorn. Yeah. You can imagine it being a fragrance, right? Pink peppercorn, bergamot. I want it. Yeah. You're bathing it. Yeah. It's an amazing smell. It is a lovely, lovely smell. It's something that you could definitely just sniff for all day, leave it by your desk. And again, it showcases the difference that terroir makes, but also a different part of the tea plant. Right? And it's interesting. I mean, we don't know the reason, but why does the plant, when it's producing these buds, produce different aromatics? I don't know. There's definitely wisdom in it, but we don't know all the answers to that. But it looks very, very different, as you can see, right? I mean, it's got this crazy sort of, wow, you know, it's a crazy, crazy tea. And you can imagine that becoming like a branch, right? Going off into different directions. Is that the leaf? No, that's the bud. Okay, the bud. Yeah. It feels quite stiff. You know, it's got like a, these are lateral buds. They come out. And so you can only pick that late winter, very, very early spring. It's one of the first things that's picked in the tea harvest every year is this. Yeah. Any other questions? Can you, because of the shape, can you do this into, make this into a tea cake? Or is it always loose? You can make it into a tea cake. They are in tea cakes. You can get those in tea cakes. But you only really put something in a tea cake if you really think it's going to age well. Ah, okay. Yeah, because I never actually understood why there's tea cakes and why there's loose and what's the differentiation? Yeah. I mean, it is mostly nowadays, it's mostly around that. It's about the fact that if you're going to store it for aging, when you press it into cake it first of all reduces the amount of storage space you need, right? Because you're pressing it. But also, you're creating like a zone where there's not much oxygen, and so it sort of holds all the aromatics in it, and it also like encourages more of a fermentation process because it's low oxygen. So it's a format that works for aging. You wouldn't really press something into a cake unless you were planning to age it. And how do you know what works well for aging? That's just trial and error, and over years, over decades, over hundreds of years we've worked out that certain teas work better than others. This type of tea is being used in cake aged. I don't necessarily think it ages that well, because I think what sells this tea is the aroma, and I don't know if that transforms that well over time. But, you know, certainly there are people that do age it as well. So there you go. You've got Fu Jian versus Yunnan, and you've got different teas from the different places. Let's put it in this order. Have a quick sort of reminder of what Fu Jian is. I think that one is warmer than that one. You can smell the leaf, and you can smell that this is a warmer tea. Then you've got the more honeyed and more sort of fruitier notes of moonlight. You're really right about that one being honey. Like, now that it's sat for a year, revisited, it is so honey-forward, yeah. Yeah, it's very honey-forward. They're really strong honey. You can smell them up. Yeah. And then, whoa, and then the one to bathe in. Yeah. You see, you can imagine people making tinctures and having tea water. Anyway, that's it. So there's your little white tea refresher. Again, you can at least taste them together. Comparative tasting is always the best way to get a sense of variation in the tea. Any other questions, or which tea do you want to do next? Well, I heard the aged ones. That's a more messy session. Okay. All right. Maybe aged white would be next. Any preferences from you? I'm curious. I feel like we haven't … wait. Is yellow tea a tea type? Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious, because I feel like I haven't heard as much about yellow tea. Okay. All right. We can do yellow. Yeah. All right. Stay tuned, and we'll be back with more lessons. That's it. Bye.