Kenya 'Rhino' Premium White Tea

Again with no note from me? How?

This fulfills the prompt for a tea with a color in the name for the April challenge. It also fulfills the desire to drink something amazing today.

The color is a rich gold, and the aroma made me think at first that I might want to use this as a “woody” tea, but I have already chosen who will fill that spot, and on tasting, this medium-to-thick bodied tea is honey up front, with a little baked sweet potato. A bare hint if mineral?

We both sat and sniffed the pot after the tea was gone, and you could have convinced anyone that it had held honey mixed with a little hot water.

Marvelous. A gift from Superanna.

I feel like a savage steeping a nominal amount of this in a 2-cup teapot with a basket without a set water temperature for a nominal amount of time. And then pouring it into a mug that’s too dark inside to distinguish the color of the liquor.

Oh well! It’s lovely, regardless. The dry leaves are delightfully soft to the touch with a malty, vegetal, caramelized scent to them. You get a strong whiff of toasted marshmallow when you lift the lid off the freshly steeped pot of tea. It smells toasty like roasted grain in the cup. Lots happening with this tea.

Taste-wise, it’s incredibly complex. Marzipan and marshmallow with caramelized sugar on the surface. Some umami, vegetal tones below that. Alfalfa and toasted rice. A prominent sweetness on the tongue and in the aftertaste. If I didn’t brew this myself, I’d swear that there was caster sugar added to it. That saccharine touch lingers for minutes afterwards. An excellent Easter tea, even when you brew it carelessly with no rhyme or reason to the process.

Rhino white tea seems processed similarly to Yunnan black teas, but with less oxidation. I guess it bears strong resemblance to Yunnan ‘yellow’ teas. It is quite complex and subtle, but I must say I find these kind of taste profiles – where subtle floral notes compete with robust malty ones – a bit unappealing.

The dry leaf scent has a strong bergamot oil note complemented by caramel, chocolate, raspberry, hay, brownies, and roasted grains. After the rinse, the aroma is slightly more robust, on the side of malt, toffee, light roast coffee beans, and cranberry pie. However, later throughout the session it actually becomes very floral.

The taste is very sweet and smooth, with notes of nectar, wood, roasted nuts and straw. On the other hand, the impression from the aftertaste is overwhelmingly floral. It still retains a lot of its sweetness and induces a cooling sensation in the throat.

The body is quite light, but I think it fits the tea very well. I found the mouthfeel fairly interesting too, very soft and delicate. All in all, it is an interesting tea for sure, but I don’t really have many occasions I would like to drink it. I think my main problem with it is that I find it a bit directionless.

Not rating, because I’m not knowledgeable enough, so this is just basically for my own notes. I wanted to try this because (I think?) some have called it a white tea for a black tea person. I’m a black tea + occasional green tea + some herbals + tisanes person. Mostly black tea, though. I don’t have the sophistication or experience to evaluate, but I just want to stray outside of my lane occasionally and try something different.

This was just okay for me. I tried it Western style (not going gong fu until I’m at least a little bit less generally ignorant) according to directions, and no sweetener, and I can’t say my jaded palate was terribly receptive. The second steep was better, but I also added a touch of sugar, which combo brought me up to “somewhat pleasant.” Okay, it’s a beginning. :) I can’t number the things that I only grew to love via persistent(ish) exposure, so I will carry on expanding my tea horizons, and see how and where it goes.

I would like to remark on What-Cha, though. I think I’ll just order their occasional surprise packets on the regular and extend my tea view via their curatorship. I love that option, and the accompanying free sample and nice note really made ordering from them special. Very warm feelings for What-Cha <3.

The dry leaves, twisted, fine-haired, and multi-colored (black, green, yellow, gray, in myriad shades) reveal careful attention and skill on the part of the producer, and emit a subtle perfume of hay, wildflowers, and raw sugar cane.

Brewed in my Korean-infuser cup 5g leaf to a bit less than 5oz (filtered L.A. tap) water @ 195ºF.

Gong-fu style infusions, roughly doubling each steep: 10, 15, 45 seconds, 1, 2, 4, and 8 minutes total.

What Cha’s description mirrors my own experience closely:

Pear gold liquid; creamy/biscuity/faintly floral aroma – quite subtle; initial unripe winter fruit note gives way to a complex gentle sweetness, suggesting alfalfa, honey, and melon. Faint spice (cardamom?), earth (worm casings?), and malt in the finish. Hints of pumpkin and baked citrus emerge at times. Lingering/returning sweetness is notable as well. Full bodied and relatively thick for a white tea, yet still largely clean (only the slightest glimmer of vegetal/oxidative notes, mostly restricted to the wet leaves themselves) and free of bitterness/astringency.

Interesting to see a “hand-made” tea come out of industrial/factory production – Kangaita is setting a high standard here.

Well, I got a big order in from What-Cha and as I’ll be reviewing it for my own purposes, I decided why not continue sharing my thoughts here on Steepster? I’m sure it would interest some others. I had considered not using Steepster anymore, but I guess for now I still feel like contributing. From here on, I think my reviews will be much shorter than in the past.

This is definitely a red (black) tea drinker’s white tea. The color brews up orange and closer in appearance to a red tea. The leaves are quite dark and oxidized. The flavor is in my opinion closer to a typical red than a white. Here are some impressions:

Gongfu style brewing in a gaiwan. Wet leaves smell of cacao and dried fruit. Liquor has aromas of honey, orange, cacao, and spices, light floral. Mouthfeel is incredibly thick and juicy.

First infusion tastes rich with notes of cacao, straw, wheat, honey, a returning huigan finish, slight melon note.

Second infusion has a heavier cacao note, slightly tangy, reminds me a bit of a moonlight white with its subtle sweetness, spice notes, and musty hay-like note, but missing the perfume of moonlight white. Nice minerality.

Compared to some other reviewers, I didn’t find this tea to be exceptional, but that all comes down to taste. It’s a great tea and I’m glad I bought it. A smooth daily drinker more than a conversation piece.

I think it was Crow Kettle who sent me a sample of this. I wanted to try this tea, but didn’t end up purchasing any on my last what-cha order. I appreciate the chance to try this unique white tea.

There is a slightly vegetal (honeysuckle? pea shoots) but there is a lot of sweetness (honey). This is much closer in flavour to a black tea than a green, with a lot of honey and tannin flavour.

I haven’t tried that many teas, as im still taking my baby steps in the tea world, but this is the best so far.
Its a delicate white tea flavour, but with lots other strong flavours and a medium thick mouthfeel going on. Can’t really compare it to other teas.
A slight astringency, no bitterness at all.

One of several reviews I have needed to post for a while, I finished off a 10 gram sample of this tea somewhere between one and two weeks ago. I don’t know why I never got around to posting a review here on Steepster in the meantime. It is perhaps most likely that I simply prioritized other reviews and this got placed on the back burner until now. I know that this was a tea I had built up in my head, perhaps to an unreasonable degree. Prior to acquiring and trying it, I had seen a number of incredibly positive reviews for it in several places, Steepster chief among them. How did it hold up for me? I found it to be an excellent tea, though I was a bit taken aback at first. As others have implied or outright stated, this is a white tea that does not have all that much in common with other white teas.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a quick rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose tea leaves in 4 ounces of 194 F water for 7 seconds. This infusion was chased by 14 subsequent infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, and 7 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea leaves emitted a powerful mix of plum, apricot, autumn leaf pile, hay, honey, and cucumber aromas. After the rinse, I began to note emerging scents of roasted almond, cream, malt, honey, and molasses. The first infusion then brought out hints of caramel and eucalyptus on the nose. I found notes of cream, malt, hay, and autumn leaf pile immediately in the mouth. They were quickly balanced by notes of molasses, caramel, roasted almond, apricot, and plum that were chased by something of a cooling eucalyptus note on the finish. There was also a surprise hint of cocoa at that point that quite literally came out of nowhere. Subsequent infusions brought out new notes of orange, lemon, vanilla, fig, wood, marzipan, and minerals. The eucalyptus presence grew stronger in the mouth. I also began to note a subtle, belatedly emerging cucumber flavor and interesting notes of fennel and basil that joined with the eucalyptus on the finish. The later infusions had more to offer than anticipated. I found lingering impressions of minerals, caramel, wood, malt, and roasted almond balanced by cooling touches of fennel and eucalyptus and vague hints of citrus and autumn leaves.

An incredibly interesting, complex tea, I can see why so many people adore it. While I enjoyed it tremendously as well, I do have to opine (more nitpick) that it was almost too much at times-I was a little overwhelmed in several places. In a lot of ways, it was almost as if the producer had somehow taken a traditional white tea and an extremely mellow hong cha and smashed them together, somehow coming out with an almost perfect blend of the two. This was most certainly not a white tea in the vein of the classic Chinese white teas I have tried, and as such, I could easily see it being used to rope in those who tend to avoid white teas. If you try one white tea this year, make it this one.

I reviewed my spreadsheet of teas and then realized that somehow I had more teas in my steepster cupboard than I had on the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is a more thorough inventory of what I own so I realized something was off and after reviewing my cupboard, it would seem there was about 9-10 teas that I managed to not remove from my cupboard, despite finishing them off. Oops. I think it is fixed now though.

Most mornings I have been having either a matcha smoothie or a plain black tea and so around 3 pm today when I realized I have had 0 caffeine, I decided it was about time to make a cup of something. None of my blacks were appealing to me so I went to the next best thing.

This tea doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves because every cup I have of it is great. Yet I don’t have it as often as I should. I feel like that sorta just comes with the territory of having a lot of teas though. This is cup is no exception. Malty, smooth, a bit of hay and some corn. I am enjoying it a great deal since it has nice flavors of white teas combined with the robustness/maltiness of a good black tea.