What is White Tea?
All forms of true tea come from the same plant, Camelia sinensis. Thus, the variances in the types of tea such as white tea, black tea, green tea and others occur as a result of the differences in the methods used to process the raw tea leaves. White tea usually involves the least amount of processing and requires extremely delicate handling. Thus, it is often considered to be the purest form of tea.
Ceylon White Tea
The type of white tea produced in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), referred to as Silver Tips and Golden Tips, is also known as needle tea and uses only the delicate and rare buds of the Camelia sinensis bush. What makes Ceylon White Tea unique, apart from the exquisite ‘terroirs’ of Sri Lanka, to borrow a term from viticulture, is its enchanting silver and golden appearance, the special TRI 2043 cultivar used and the delicate processing methods involved. All of which are still carried out by hand according to traditions handed down through generations.
Over the centuries, planters developed various clonal varieties, or “cultivars” as they are now commonly known, to exaggerate certain characteristics or suppress others. In the early days of tea in Ceylon, during the late 1800s, the country’s at-the-time world famous coffee industry had been decimated by a terrible blight. Therefore, planters were keen to select for tea bushes that were resistant to blight.
Out of this came a particular cultivar that possessed buds with a more purple hue and significantly more hairlike structures (trichomes). When dried in the sun, these buds developed a beautiful silver colour and yielded a unique aroma and flavour. Today, the Tea Research Institute of Sri Lanka has classified this cultivar as TRI 2043 and it is the one used to produce Ceylon White Tea.
A Labour of Love
The creation of Ceylon White Tea is a simple, yet incredibly delicate process that requires care, experience and a true passion for teamaking.
Plucking
The discovery of this new cultivar sparked the development of a new variety of tea, which was very rare, yet incredibly popular. To obtain the best quality, legends say that planters began harvesting the buds by hand using golden scissors and carried the buds away from the tea gardens in silk pouches. Even today, harvesting is done in a similar fashion with scissors and cloth pouches, though with no gold or silk involved. This is done to prevent any maceration or damage to the buds, which could trigger the process of oxidation, destroying the pure flavours of Ceylon White Tea.
Withering and Drying
While most white teas will be left to wilt (wither) and then be dried in an oven or tea drier, Ceylon White Tea is withered and dried under the tropical sun. It is a painstaking process that sees the buds laid out on clean woven mats and turned over by hand, under the supervision of an expert teamaker, until the desired result is achieved. The natural colour that the buds take on when dried is silver. Thus, they are referred to as silver tips and yield an aromatic and refreshing light yellow brew.
Golden Tips: A Step Further
To obtain golden tips, the buds are misted by hand with the best brews of the estate, while they are drying in the sun. This misting is what gives golden tips its beautiful golden colour, signature velvety mouthfeel, distinct sophisticated flavour and amber brew, a result of the small quantities of natural tannins that are introduced as a result of the misting process.
Delighting the World
Once dried and ready, these treasures are delicately packaged and shipped off to enchant the palettes of tea connoisseurs around the world. Ceylon White Tea is a rare treat and the result of a labour of love handed down through the generations. It is the ultimate experience of tea and should be reserved for cherishing life’s most beautiful and serene moments, alone or with choice company.
