Today I went back to one of the first loose leaf teas that I ever fell in love with: Bai Mu Dan or White Peony, a fairly high quality white tea from Fujian, China.
As with every style of tea, white tea exists in a wide range. There are cake-pressed and aged white teas like Moonlight White, bud-only white teas like Silver Needle, and bold broken white teas like Shou Mei. Bai Mu Dan places itself somewhere in the middle of the pack.
The large, mostly unbroken leaves are a mixture of buds (actually just very young leaves) and more mature leaves. In the cup it produces a comforting golden color and delicate yet toasty flavor. It has enough body to get three or so infusions and is very forgiving of water temperatures.
When I was still new to the tea world, I tasted Bai Mu Dan at Dobra Tea and was hooked by its simplicity, appearance, and taste. Being easy to brew was also a big plus for someone who had just discovered how to use a gaiwan!
I used to order four bags of it at a time to my home in Boston. This was not actually all that much tea because, like most unbroken white teas except the pressed ones, white tea takes up a lot of space!
The production of white tea is both one of the simplest of all tea styles and one of the most challenging. The tea is harvested, and then laid out in the sun to dry before a final air drying process. The “fixing” of the leaf to stop oxidation is done by the drying itself, quite unlike green tea which is fired over a wok or steamed. This accounts for some of the nuttiness and body of white tea since it tends to be slightly more oxidized than green tea, edging toward the territory of oolongs.
Still, despite the small number of steps, or maybe because of them, white tea leaves must be carefully chosen and delicately handled. Any imperfections in the raw material cannot be covered by skillful processing. This is partially why good white tea can be unusually expensive: only the finest leaves can be used.
This cup of Bai Mu Dan took me back to those days at the start of my tea journey, and I hope to enjoy this kind of tea for the rest of my days.
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