Kristin

Wow, that sounds absolutely delicious. I am tempted to order some right away :)

If you do, make sure you put in the special notes that I referred you. I’m trying to win free tea for a year! :)

Bai Mu Dan (sometimes Pai Mu Tan, as at TeaGsch) is a very delicate white tea. I’m surprised anyone is flavoring it.

If you can find an unflavored version, I would give it a try, you’ll probably enjoy it quite a bit. Whites of this kind lend themselves to a sort of sweetness and wouldn’t be harmed by a drop of agave.

The flavoring is pretty delicate. They did a nice job with it. I’ve had an unflavored white tea before and found it to be a little bland. I don’t remember what kind of white it was (probably was something from Teavana).

I’ve never had black currants, but red currants are very tart. My grandparents had current bushes when I was growing up and they told me to eat them by squishing them under my tongue 1st.

I would say that white teas a) are pretty varied, as most tea is, and b) really aren’t worth buying unless you buy really, really good ones, because instead of being light they end up just being flat.

Jim… well yeah. Why would you buy bad tea no matter what kind? Everyone has their own idea of good/bad, but buying bad tea is dumb.

Dumb it may be, but an awful lot of bad tea gets sold in this country nevertheless. ;-)

However, my point was that with white tea, it isn’t a question of good versus bad, but rather a question of mediocre versus good versus very good versus exceptional. I have found that Teavana tries to pass off mediocre/good tea as very good/exceptional simply by charging twice what the tea is worth. I wouldn’t be at all surprised that a white tea that Kristin tried from that shop was bland – I’ve never been impressed with anything I’ve had from them.

What I’m saying is, if you want to drink unflavored white tea and have it impress you, you probably need to drop some serious coin on some serious tea. White tea is too fragile to survive the trip to your cup with all the nuances intact except under the best of care; which most tea doesn’t get.

Re. bad tea. That is why I have stopped buying almost any tea that I cannot buy a sample of first (this one was an exception because 52 teas are so unique). I got tired of throwing away large tins of tea.

Shrugs… I even like adagio’s whites so price doesn’t always matter.

I didn’t like any of the teas that I ordered from Adagio.

Liking a tea is a matter of personal taste and preference, it has nothing to do with objective quality. Objective quality is expensive. Unfortunately, sometimes stuff that isn’t very good is also expensive. So yes, we should not mistake a high price tag for quality, but the reality is, something that is of objective quality is going to be expensive. Based on what Kristin has said, my suspicion is that she isn’t going to enjoy lesser whites.