Category Archives: White Tea

Saturday Morning Tea

I’ve become fascinated with roofs lately. Yes, you heard me correctly – roofs. In particular, the big chunks of ice and icicles hanging from their edges.

This has been such a rough winter in New England with a foot of snow arriving every week it seems and so many people are dealing with collapsed roofs and leakages from ice dams. On the news, they recommend shoveling the snow off your roof. However, when you live in a 3-story house such as I do, that task seems monumental. I’ve been lucky and have had only a minimum amount of leaking from one of my windows.

Ok, on to my tea…

Introducing Moonlight white tea. For me, the name conjures up images of a huge, full moon illuminating a tropical sea, a path of glitter from shore to horizon. Hey, I think that all of this snow is inspiring daydreams of a warm place. A much warmer place…

The leaf of this white tea from China is enormous and beautifully variegated, ranging in color from dark olive to silvery green.

I steeped the leaves in 180 degree F water for 3 minutes which produced a lovely pale yellow liquor.

The aroma is soft and floral, the floral notes carrying on into the flavor. Notes of honey and apricot whisper in the delicate taste. This would be a wonderful treat for white tea lovers to try.

Speaking of a treat, I treated myself to a pair of new teamugs this week. Made by Bodum, they’re double-walled, insulated borosilicate glass mugs.

I was amazed at how light they are! I just love anything glass and now I can see my tea while I’m drinking it.

Like my glass teapot, I’ll treat my new mugs with extra TLC and handwash them. So far, I think they’re great. I see from the brochure that came with my mugs that there’s a whole line of these glasses in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Hmmm, perhaps a pair of tall glasses this summer for iced tea…

Does anyone have any experience with these glasses?

Rain is in our forecast for later today so it’s a good day for staying inside and playing in my studio. Now that I’ve finished my Towers and Turrets necklace (see last post), I’m ready to start on a brand new project!

“Ah!  There’s nothing like staying home for real comfort.”

~Jane Austen

Saturday Morning Tea

Happy New Year! I hope that you all enjoyed the holiday season. And now here we find ourselves in January of a brand new year.

A time of new beginnings…

As I gaze out my window at an iced world of white, it inspired me to reach for a delicate leaf to steep in my cup this morning, a China white called White Point Reserve.

Composed entirely of unopened leaf buds, this tea is soft and sweet.

I steeped the buds in 180 degree F water for 3 minutes.

The buds remain unopened in their pristine state even after steeping. White tea is the least processed of all teas, plucked, dried, gently heated to halt oxidation and there you go.

The tea liquor is a pale ecru color and allows my teapot to reflect the winter wonderland outside. A lightly sweet aroma drifts from my cup and the flavor is also sweet with nutty notes. It always amazes me how white tea usually doesn’t have a hint of the vegetal quality of green tea.

I chose my “iced” tea bowl to enjoy my tea in. Notice a color theme (or lack thereof) going on here?

This type of weather at this time of year always induces a quiet, reflective state of mind for me. I just want to sit and do nothing else but sip my tea and gaze out my window…

“Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.”

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Saturday Morning Tea

Good morning to you, tea friends, on this searing hot summer’s day here in New England. I feel like something light this morning so I brewed up a pot of a very unique white tea from the Tinderet estate in Kenya. I’ve never had a white African tea before. Isn’t the leaf gorgeous with all of those fine downy white hairs?

This tea leaf was grown in the Lelsa subdistrict of Tinderet which is located in the Rift Valley province of Kenya. Wikipedia describes a Rift Valley as follows:

“A rift valley is a linear-shaped lowland between highlands or mountain ranges created by the action of a geologic rift or fault.”

As with all white teas, the new growth is plucked and then allowed to wither to reduce its moisture content. A heating process follows to halt the natural oxidation of the leaf which would turn it dark.

A gentle 3 minute steep in 180 degree F water reveals small pointed leaves that have curled into tiny swords.

The light aroma reminds me of biscuits.

The straw yellow liquor has a delicate flavor with fruity hints and, yes, a hint of eucalyptus there.

Oh so silky smooth with a sweetness that lingers.

As the temperature outside rises and my tea cools, I wonder what it would taste like iced…

Enjoy this beautiful weekend. I leave you with one of my favorite Rilke quotes.

“If only it were possible for us to see farther than our knowledge reaches, and even a little beyond the outworks of our presentiment, perhaps we would bear our sadnesses with greater trust than we have our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy embarrassment, everything in us withdraws, a silence arises, and the new experience, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it all and says nothing.”

~Rainer Maria Rilke

Saturday Morning Tea

For my morning tea on this bright spring morning, I’ve chosen an Assam tea. Wait a minute, you might be saying as you look at my photo, that doesn’t look like an Assam tea at all! That’s because it is a white Assam. Located in northeast India, Assam is most noted for its full-bodied, rich black teas. This unique white tea is from the Mothola estate.

I have read that this tea estate was flooded back in the 60s when the banks of the Brahmaputra river eroded and water swept through the estate. Through the combined efforts of the workers and management, they were able to restore 1000 acres to grow tea once again.

This tea is meticulously crafted using only the tips of the Assamica variety of the Camellia Sinensis tea plant. Native to this lowland region, this variety has large leaves and grows to be a small tree.

When these indigenous tea plants were first identified by Major Robert Bruce around 1823, many believed that they were not capable of producing quality tea as the China variety was. You can read more about that here.

I steeped the leaves for 4 minutes in 180 degree F water. The glowing gold liquor has a distinct malty aroma, immediately identifying it as an Assam tea. However, that’s where the similarity ends.

The flavor is delicate and sweet with complex malty notes. A hint of fruitiness makes a brief appearance across my tongue.

This tea is exquisite and can be compared to a specialty white tea from China. While I do love their white teas, this tea has an extra special something that calls me back for more.

As my hands wrap lightly around my hand-crafted teabowl, I watch the trees dance in the wind outside my window. It’s a perfect day to work in the garden.

Enjoy your weekend!

I wandered lonely as a cloud

that floats on high o’er vales and hills,

when all at once I saw a crowd,

a host of golden daffodils:

beside the lake, beneath the trees,

fluttering and dancing in the breeze….

for oft, when on my couch I lie

in vacant or in pensive mood

they flash upon that inward eye

which is the bliss of solitude;

and then my heart with pleasure fills,

and dances with the daffodils.

~William Wordsworth

Saturday Morning Tea

Oh my, where did the morning go to?

I started out the day by indulging in a sleep in, getting 3 hours extra sleep than normal. Very decadent, I know. It’s the perfect day for it though – gray and dreary with heavy rain and wind. A day you want to stay under the covers a little longer.

I felt like something lighter this morning so I brewed a pot of Pai Mu Tan, an organic white tea from China. The least processed of all the teas, you can still see the downy white hairs on the leaf. Also known as Bai Mu Tan tea which literally translates to “white peony”.

I have read that the plucking rules for this tea are very strict. It is only allowed to be picked between mid-March and mid-April and only when it is dry out. No rain, no dew, no frost on the ground.

The epitome of spring in a cup of tea.

As you can see, it is a fine plucking, meaning the top two leaves and the bud. The tender leaves remind me of what is starting to peek out of the soil here in New England. Soon the crocuses will begin the blooming parade of color.

I steeped the leaves for 3 minutes in 180 degree F water. The pale gold liquor is delicate and sweet with a bloom of fruity notes in the flavor.

I am often surprised when people say that white tea has no flavor. Yes, the taste is delicate but I find it full of complexity and flavor. The expectations are not the same as those for a black or Oolong tea.

Amazing how they all come from the same plant though. It’s like people. All of us are born with the same parts, we breathe, we eat, we have blood flowing through our bodies. What happens after that, our experiences and how we respond to them contributes to what makes us different.

I love the color of this teabowl. The white tea is so pale that it shows the beautiful green color of my bowl.

What tea is in your cup this weekend?

“Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.” ~John Muir