What is White Tea?

Find out more about the white teas available from Whittard of Chelsea here: http://bit.ly/2taFykR

White tea is a speciality tea from China.

It’s got an incredibly long history. With records dating back to the Tang dynasty.

It was un the ‘song' dynasty that emperor Hi Jong fell in love with white tea and made it incredibly popular.

It originated in Fujian province in South East China but you get fantastic white teas in Yin Nam and we also work with producers in India to source white teas now.

The blend that I’m going to make today is Silver Needle and its one of the most famous white teas in China.

You can see the little downy fur that covers the bud because this tea is only made with tea buds. The leaf is still inside because it’s so young it hasn’t had a chance to come out yet.

In one kilo there are around 20,000 buds so it’s a very labour-intensive tea to pick.

2 teaspoons are perfect because these buds are extremely large and use 80-degree water so just if you’re boiling your kettle leave the lid up and just let it cool down for around 10 minutes

This tea is so delicate if you use boiling water it's going to pull out a lot of the bitter flavour compounds rather than the really sweet amino acids.

You’ll often see that white tea has a low caffeine content. Now be very careful because actually it will vary dramatically depending on the harvest.

On average white tea will be between 10 and 50 milligrams per cup compared to a coffee which is 100 milligrams per cup.

But if you’re very sensitive, you definitely don’t want to drink white tea thinking its caffeine free

The flavour that you get from the leaf is really delicate, sappy and you get beautiful flavours of cucumber, cantaloupe melon, real natural sweetness coming through.

Do not add milk to white tea. It doesn’t work well, and you should just be appreciating those beautiful subtle flavours yourself

If you’d like to learn more about tea head to whittard.co.uk or click on the link in the description.