White tea

White tea is the uncured and unoxidized tea leaf. Like green, oolong and black tea, white tea comes from the Camellia sinensis plant. Oolong and black teas are oxidized before curing.

White tea contains buds and young tea leaves, with higher caffeine than older leaves, suggesting the caffeine content of white teas may be higher than that of green teas.^[1]

White tea is a specialty of the Chinese province Fujian.^[2] The leaves come from varieties of tea cultivars. Popular are Da Bai (Large White), Xiao Bai (Small White), Narcissus and Chaicha bushes. According to the standards of picking and selection, white teas can be classified into a number of grades, described in the varieties section.

Chinese white teas

• Bai Hao Yinzhen (Silver needle): The highest grade of the Bai Hao Yinzhen should be fleshy, bright colored and covered with tiny white hairs. The shape should be very uniform, with no stems or leaves. The very best Yinzhen are picked between March 15 and April 10 when it is not raining and only using undamaged and unopened buds. Fujian Province, China.
• Bai Mu Dan ( (White Peony): A grade down from Bai Hao Yinzhen tea, incorporating the bud and two leaves which should be covered with a fine, silvery-white down. From Fujian Province, China. (Sometimes spelled Pai Mu Tan.)
• Gong Mei (Tribute Eyebrow): The third grade of white tea, the production uses leaves from the Xiao Bai or "small white" tea trees.
• Shou Mei (Noble, Long Life Eyebrow): A fruity, furry white tea that is a mix of tips and upper leaf, it has a stronger flavor than other white teas, similar to Oolong. It is the fourth grade of white tea and is plucked later than Bai Mu Dan hence the tea may be darker in color. From Fujian Province and Guangxi Province in China
• White Puerh Tea: Harvested in the spring from plantations found high on remote mountain peaks of Yunnan Province, China. Incredibly labor intensive with each step processed by hand, these luxury whites are wonderfully rich in fragrance, and possess an alluring, sweet nectar-like quality.

Other white teas

• Ceylon White: Grown in Sri Lanka. Ceylon White tea can fetch much higher prices than black tea from the area. The tea has a light liquoring with notes of pine and honey and a golden coppery infusion.
• Darjeeling White It has a delicate aroma and brews to a pale golden cup with a mellow taste and a hint of sweetness. It has a delicate taste. A tea from Darjeeling, India.
• Assam White: White tea production in the Assam, north eastern region of India is rare. Lighter in body than the traditional black teas, a white Assam yields a refined infusion that is sweet with a distinct malty character.
• African White: Produced in minuscule amounts in Malawi and Kenya, mostly as silver needles (Yin Zhen) type made of assamensis buds; usually higher in caffeine and richer in flavour than Chinese whites, sometimes approaching yellow teas, and often changing flavours in the cup.