White Tea (2018)

Mastress Alita’s sipdown challenge Wednesday, February 17th: Random Acts of Kindness Day Tea #1
I drank these theme days yesterday, but I’m slow to post the notes today. Another good theme day.  I’d say tea swaps are “gifted teas” so I wanted to go for teas from swaps and definitely teas I haven’t written notes about yet.  This is one!  Kindly sent by derk!  Thank you!  derk and Martin love this tea.  I keep trying it different ways, but to me it tastes like a typical white tea.  It was in  a sealed sample pouch, so the freshness should be fine.  I like that Roswell’s recent note about a white tea mentioned paper and YES sometimes white tea tastes like paper to me in all the best ways.  It really reminds me of crisp fresh white paper (cardboard teas are something else entirely.)   This time I tried with a ton of these autumnal looking leaves but short steeps.  It’s such a gentle tea, I think you could do anything with it but sometimes short steeps have more flavor nuance.  The second steep was very sweet and proving it’s a great white.  Very clear and crisp.  Cold, the last gulp has something like tangy tamarind. This is a lovely white tea but not really something that stands out. Maybe I shouldn’t be steeping this western? So I’m not finding this as special as a 99 rating like derk and Martin, but it’s a very good white.
Steep #1  // 3  teaspoons for full mug // 30 minutes after boiling  // 30 second steep
Steep #2  // 28 minutes after boiling //  1 minute steep
Steep #3 // just boiled // 3 min

No rating, so far.

Grandpa, 2 grams, almost boiling water.

Is it too hot? Not enough leaves? Answer for both is nope. It was awesome tea! So smooth. And taste? Well hard to describe actually, it reminded me cream, but with wood and wet forest. Bit of minerality was there too. Astringency? Yep, but just a little bit.

Autumn tea. At least for me.

Derk; I have waited for good weather for this tea. And as it is typical autumn; wet, cloudy, rainy, unpleasant weather, I think it was just perfect. THANK you a lot for this experience!

Maybe I’ve rated this Wuyi white tea so highly because it’s unlike any white tea I’ve had, very savory and assertive. Maybe it’s because I’m a fan of Wuyi oolong and black teas and this tea also clearly comes from that, ahem, terroir :P

Or maybe it’s because this tea is like strolling through a forest on a dry and warm autumn day in my home state of Ohio.

crunchy autumn leaves fallen and still falling
smoke snaking through the trees
round bales of hay left in the bright sun at the edge of a farmer’s meadow
a quick shimmy up a pine tree (this tea gets me elevated, haha)
snacking on roasted nuts and a dried sausage with apricot from my jacket pocket
mushrooms pushing up from the forest floor
plants giving out the last bit of their sweet nectar
peeling lichen from the cool limestone cliffs at the bottom of a gorge
somehow yellow peonies and cream fit in with all of this, lol, i promise

This tea is like home.