a tea hacker

White tea is kind of wild western to most people, it has very special charming characters that waiting for discovery. This is the third part of Learn White Tea The Hard Way, you can also read the previous two parts in advance – Is White tea color white? and Silver Needle the Queen.

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Yesterday the peony saved me from the headache, just 9g of peony, 6g of cassia twig and 6g of licorice root that cost 0.3 bucks. (Don’t use it as there is deep theory of Chinese Medicine behind it.) To me it’s an angel. Actually the peony I used is Paeonia lactiflora or named Garden Peony. There is another peony, it’s Tree Peony or named Paeonia suffruticosa. They both share the same word peony, why is that?

Peony love

There was a prince named Peony, he is the sole son of the king and big lover of wild plants. Peony always sneak out of the palace to the mountains and bring back many no-name flowers. One day he met his Ms. Right who is a daughter of tea farmer, they shared the same passion with the nature and curiosity of how the plants cure people. Sweet time flies and cut off by the call of the country. He never came back. The old King was devastated, calling his name and staring to the tree flower Peony brought back.

After receiving the bad news, the girl moved to the Taimu Mountain, continued the plants work and screened out the one for tea. One time the village was hit by the measles epidemic, she saved many people by his tea. The villagers were grateful to this White family girl thus call her Taimu Niang Niang respectively and named this gracious tea as White Peony.

Bai Mu Dan 白牡丹

There is a definition in Act GB/T 22291-2017, it clearly tell what is White Peony:

Bai Mu Dan is made with one bud along with one or two leaves that picked from varietal Big White or Water Sprite and go through Withering, Drying and Refining.

Beside the specific White tea processing craft, two points should be noticed:

• Picking standard
• Cultivar

Picking standard is easy to understand, what may get you lost is the cultivar used, as there are many plants share the same name.

Tea cultivar Big White

1. Fuding Big White
2. Fuding Big Hair
3. Zhenghe Big White
4. Fuan Big White
5. Jiulong Big White
6. Jinggu Big White

All six are meant for White Peony but the one below is another story.

Tea cultivar Water Sprite

1. Water Sprite – Shui Xian: it’s planted mostly in three areas and all evolved to different craft
2. Phoenix Water Sprite – Feng Huang Shui Xian

Phenix Water Sprite derives from Phoenix Mountain where has a very famous Oolong tea named Phoenix Dan Cong, this cultivar is totally different from the other one. Traditionally it’s not endorsed for White tea. However this cultivar got my interest for its exaggerated aroma, some experiments are in the progress, hopefully receive some surprises.

The traitor

Purity is the nature of White tea that derived from simplicity of the craft which contains only Withering as its core technology. This rule broke down in 1968, a new technology combined with Black tea craft was invented. In order to get stronger taste, Rolling and Fermenting these two Black tea weapons are deployed, the new technology is named as New Craft White tea or Hong Kong White tea.

Customers are godddness of inspiration

Hong Kong White tea is a story of Muse. In 1964 The Fujian Tea Company received feedback letter from Hong Kong, in this letter it pointed out the new tea should have good body, nice tip but not broken leaf, also the tea water could be yellow or bit of red, it doesn’t matter but White tea flavor is a must have.

Mr. Liu Dianqiu who was the leader of this new project, announced the success in 1968. The shortcoming is it loses the Aging character. Normally White tea has the abillity of fighting with time, as time goes by, the aroma and taste could have charming change, as well as stronger medicine effect. Now all these functions are greatly reduced.

It is not a pure White tea anymore, but who don’t like rebellion and courage, that’s one of the greatest the driving force. I improved this technology and created the tea Michelangelo.

White tea is kind of wild western to most people, it has very special charming characters that waiting for discovery. This is the second part of Learn White Tea The Hard Way, you can also read the first part in advance – Is White tea color white?.

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Once upon a time there was a Queen ruled the world, she was a calligrapher, a landscape painter, a musician and also good at archery and riding, in the bone she is an artist. She founded the National Painting Academy which turned out many outstanding painters like Wang Ximeng, Zhang Zeduan, also she wrote a famous tea book, in her book she pointed out White tea is an unique existence that differ from the ordinary.

白茶自為一種，與常茶不同。其條敷闡，其葉瑩薄。崖林之間，偶然生出，雖非人力所可致。有者不過四、五家，生者不過一、二株，所造止於二、三胯而已。芽英不多，尤難蒸培，湯火一失，則已變而為常品。須製造精微，運度得宜，則表裏昭徹，如玉之在璞，它無與倫也。

There is only one thing she’s not good at, that is to say the politics. Her kingdom was defeated later, the Queen became a prisoner in a foreign country. One day when saw the autumn falling leaves, she drank a cup of her beloved tea and wrote down a very sad poetry. Upon hearing this, her enemy flew into a rage and killed her.

After death, her soul finally got free and transformed into her beloved white tea, people call it the Silver Needle.

Restless free soul

Ancient Chinese divided the circle of the annual motion of the sun into 24 equal segments, each segment was called a Jie Qi or solar term. Every season contains six solar terms while the spring owns the followings:

1. Beginning of Spring 立春
2. Rain Water 雨水
3. Insects Awakening 惊蛰
4. Spring Equinox 春分
5. Fresh Green 清明
6. Grain Rain 谷雨

Solar term Spring Equinox sits at about date March 20, it is one of the two times in the year when the sun is above the equator and day and night are of the equal length. From that day on, the heat above the ground starts to be more than underground, hence urge the tea begin to sprout. These early birds are the Silver Needle.

Bai Hao Yin Zhen

According to Act GB/T 22291-2017 Silver Needle is made with the buds of varietal Big White or Water Sprite that go through Withering, Drying and Refining. As it’s fully covered white hair, so received the full name White Hair Silver Needle. There are two grades available:

• Super Grade
• Grade One

Both looks silver grey yet Super Grade has rich gloss also stout and strong. Traditionally this tea appreicate the tip aroma, it’s a special aroma of the good fluff creates. The most important difference between these two grades is the tip aroma, or called Hao Xiang 毫香.

The origin Fuding

The White tea has kind of short history that is about only two hundred years, in about 1857 varietal Fuding Big White was found and in about 1885 started to use its buds to make tea, then this craft was spreaded into Zhenghe county in 1889 but use local varietal Zhenghe Big White instead.

If you look Fuding from the sky, you will notice there is a lot of green color. It sits in the eat of Fujian province. Taimu Mountain, where has the White tea father plant, is a small island. Fuding tea mostly comes from the island and the inland, people even joke the White tea from the island has fishy smell. But we like the fishman right, just as love as Ernest Hemingway.

Once you walk into the heart of Fuding, there is one thing you will nerver overlook, that’s the bamboo forest, the essence of Chinese scholar culture. Do you know who is the most famous bamboo painter? It’s Zheng Banqiao who only painted two plants: The orchid, symbol of loyalty and the bamboo, symbol of never giving up. Anyway tea picked around this envirenment has fresh bamboo aroma. People use this plants to make bamboo tray, basket then to make tea, thus make the White tea refreshing and breathable.

White tea is kind of wild western to most people, it has very special charming characters that waiting for discovery. This is the first part of Learn White Tea The Hard Way.

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The first thing you learn White tea is about the definition, as White tea is kind of little brother in the market, not so many products, not so much information available. There is a national standard of White tea in China numbered GB/T 22291-2017, many questions can be answered there.

GB/T 22291-2017

The interesting part actually is about the drafting units of this standard, it reveals how and where this paper comes except the what. There are ten units:

1. Hangzhou Tea Research Institute
2. Fujian Yu Rong Xiang Tea Co., Ltd.
3. Fuding Quality Measurement and Testing Institute
4. Fujian PINPINTEA Co., Ltd.
5. Fujian Tianhu Tea Co., Ltd.
6. Zhenghe Bai Mu Dan Tea Co., Ltd.
7. Zhenghe Dao Xiang Tea Co., Ltd.
8. Fujian Agriculture And Forestry University
9. National Center for Tea Quality Inspection and Testing
10. China Tea Marketing Association

Above ten units can be classified into three groups:

• University like number 8
• Private tea companies like number 2, 4-7
• National institutions like number 1, 3, 9 and 10

All private tea companies comes from Fujian province, even the national institutions number 4 and the university, it mostly defines the standard, Fujian is the center of White tea, or specifically Fuding city is the heart of China White tea.

White tea definition

In the act GB/T 22291-2017, there is a clear word about what’s White tea.

White tea is made with the buds, leaves or young stems of Camellia Sinensis and go through Withering, Drying and Refining.

The most important part of this craft is Withering or long time withering, here we do not use the word Fermenting though it’s slightly fermented. Fermenting in Black tea needs high temperature along with high humidity, so it can violently turn into red color in 3-5 hours. Contrarily White tea takes over 48-72 hours , it’s a much longer shot, that’s where the descriptive word delicate comes.

Color

There are four types of White tea:

• Silver Needle – Bai Hao Yin Zhen 白毫银针
• White Peony – Bai Mu Dan 白牡丹
• Gong Brow – Gong Mei 贡眉
• Shou Brow – Shou Mei 寿眉

The words used for color description including Silver, Gray, White and Green, even Black is used for Shou Brow, but White is the most frequently used word. So if you want, you can arbitrarily say White tea is White.