White Tea

Elegant. Silky. Smooth. Descriptions of your inn’s finest bedding? No.

Descriptions of the tea you should be serving in your home and bed & breakfast? Yes!

White tea is among the most elegant, silky and smooth teas you’ll ever have the pleasure of drinking or serving. Why? Because it is primarily produced using only the immature, silvery leaf buds of the camellia sinensis plant. While some (slightly) lesser quality white teas are produced using these immature buds and young leaves as well, the finest of all white teas, Silver Needles, is harvested for a few short days in early spring and is produced entirely from new, tender buds.

Wonder how white tea gets its name? One explanation suggests the name comes from the silvery, downy, fuzz which covers the leaf buds and turns white when the leaves are dried. Another explanation suggests the name comes from the unsurpassed lightness of the tea’s color once it has been brewed. In either case, white tea is exceptionally light in both color and taste, and is best brewed with water that is not too hot, about 170-180 degrees F only, to avoid scalding the tea and making it bitter and astringent. Also, due in part to it’s delicate, honey-like flavor, white tea is one of the few teas suited to being served at room temperature in addition to being served hot or iced.

Aside from the fact that white tea is produced using young leaf buds, what distinguishes it from the other basic teas? Primarily, the way in which white tea is manufactured.

Unlike black, green or oolong teas, the leaf buds for white tea are typically hand selected, withered and then bake dried, undergoing no additional processes including those of fermentation (oxidation.) This lack of oxidation and processing makes white tea an extremely healthy alternative compared to coffee or sodas because of it’s low caffeine content and high levels of polyphenols (up to 3 times the amount found in green tea,) purportedly good for: detoxifying and supporting the body’s immune system, preventing cardiovascular disease, acting as an anti-carcinogen, normalizing cellular activity and supporting oral health.

A native of and still primarily produced in China, white tea can be more expensive than the other basic teas due to its rarity. But like the 3 other basic teas, white tea is often produced in different varieties and can be infused with flavors including pear, peach, blueberry and tangerine.

This concludes Inn Cuisine’s introductory series on the 4 basic teas. If you have comments or questions you’d like to share or have answered, you are invited to submit them in the comment section of their appropriate post. Also, if you’ve enjoyed this series on tea, future series are being planned which will delve further into different varieties of the 4 basic teas, exploring their nuances and pairing them with specialty cuisine found in bed & breakfast inns across America.

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