Ingredients · Tea

White Tea

Camellia sinensis · Theaceae (tea family)

White Tea
The least-handled tea there is: picked, withered, dried, and nothing else — no rolling, no pan, no fixing. What you taste is close to what the leaf tasted like on the bush. Silver Needle is buds only; Pai Mu Tan, or White Peony, is buds with the first leaves; Shou Mei is the later pluck. It is also one of the youngest named tea types, probably no more than two centuries old, whatever is said about Song emperors. Seven products here use it, usually where a flavouring is delicate enough to be heard over a quiet base.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partLeaf and bud
KindTea
CaffeineContains caffeine
Where it is fromChina
TasteHoney, melon, hay and fresh flowers; a pale gold cup and a very quiet one
How to brew it
  • 180°F / 82°C
  • 4 to 5 minutes
  • or cold-brewed overnight

How to use it

Around 175 to 185°F and 4 to 5 minutes — white tea needs longer than a green but cooler than a black, and it is easy to underbrew into nothing. Excellent cold-brewed overnight, which is probably the best thing you can do with it in summer. Drink it plain; there is nothing here that survives milk.

With food

Melon and white peach. Cucumber. Fresh cheese. Almond and pistachio. Light shellfish. Honey. Delicate cake.

With spices

Rose. Vanilla, very lightly. Lemon peel. Cardamom, one pod. Almost anything stronger will simply take over.

With tea

Blended with berries, peach, rose and cornflower, which is what nearly every flavoured white in this shop does.

Its story

Where it comes from

Produced primarily in Fujian province, and more recently in Taiwan, eastern Nepal, Thailand, southern Sri Lanka and northeast India. Fuding and Zhenghe counties are the two main districts, each with its own Da Bai — Large White — cultivar. The Fuding White Tea Culture System was designated a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System by the FAO in 2025; tea provides nearly 70 per cent of household income there.

What happened

The oldest thing about white tea is the mountain. Taimu Shan in Fuding holds the mother plant of Luxueya, green snow shoots, regarded as the ancestor of white tea — and the legend that in the time of the mythical Emperor Yao a woman called Langu sheltered there, found a tree with silvery downy buds, and when measles swept through brewed its leaves for the children, who recovered. The people made her a goddess, Taimu Niangniang. The other legend belongs to the name White Peony: a Han-dynasty official called Mao Yi, weary of court, retired with his mother to a hillside beside a lotus pool and eighteen white peonies, and when she fell ill a vision told him what she needed was carp and new tea together. In the depth of winter the eighteen peonies turned into tea trees, and the leaves he dried curled like peony flowers. The documented history is shorter: Silver Needle was cultivated in Fuding around 1796, export began around 1891, and the words white tea may first have appeared in English print in 1876.

On the shelf with it

Every product it goes into.

Every ingredient in the shop

Explore

Other ways in

Ingredients Every plant, seed, bark and salt in the shop on one page — what it is, why it is in the blend, and where it comes from. See them all Collections Every shelf in the shop on one page — teas by leaf and flavour, spices by kind and cuisine. Open any shelf to see what is on it. Browse the shelves The Showroom The whole shop on one floor — every tea, spice and blend, filtered by what you are after, with the basket beside you. Open the Showroom Elsewhere Seventeen short trips — a place, a moment, a feeling — each with the teas and spices that get you there. Take a trip