Ever looked at your tea stash and didn’t know what to drink? Uninspired with your tea collection? Well, one piece of advice I have said to others is to “Take a leaf from each of your teas and drink it!” Today, I will be following my advice and drinking ALL* my white teas!
Purple Tea Owl and I went through all my tins, white tea pumidor, and sample buckets to pluck a single leaf or pinch off a piece of white tea cake then placed it in a tin.
Why white teas, Oolong Owl, when you are in fact the Oolong of Owls?
Out of all my teas, my white teas have the most organized, biggest volume, least samples, and the lowest logistical nightmare to extract tea from.
The range of white teas in this session range from 2019 to even 1980, with plenty of aged 1990s, 2008, and 2012. I gathered white tea spanning from China’s Fujian, Yunnan, Guizhou province, but also Taiwan, Myanmar, Indonesia, Kenya, Colombia, Vietnam, and Thailand. The white tea spans across different styles including Shou Mei, Bai Mu Dan, Baihao Yinzhen, Gong Mei, and Yue Guang Bai, all in 500 bricks, 50-200g cakes, wild growth, old tree, and crap fanning grade. The price ranges of each tea are pennies per gram and up to $3.50 per gram.
After picking through ALL* my white teas, I got just under 6 grams. Likely if you want more than a single session worth or for a group, or depending on how big your stash it, you’ll want to pull 2 or 3 leaves instead of a single leaf.
Appearance-wise, it looks like a Bai Mu Dan in the colours of an Oriental Beauty with some cake crumbs. Scent wise, its a blend of fruity, floral, and stale funk from the more humid storage old white teas in there.
After an infusion, the hot leaf smells like tangy fruit, stale flowers, and swampy paperback books.
Drinking ALL* My White Teas
First Infusion: Owl’s ALL* White Tea Blend steeps up a pale gold colour. The flavor is InTeReSting, to say the least. Overall, the texture is incredibly thick, like drinking cotton fluff. The flavor profile is all over the map with juicy floral, linen, paperback books, how a dollar store crossword puzzles smell, aloe, honey, and chlorine.
Second Infusion: The second infusion has a dominant flavor of rhubarb stalks without the tart, with the finish of funky wet then dried paper.
Third Infusion: Further going down this trip of a white tea session, this infusion shifts again tasting of lime, hay, linen, grass, driftwood, and old basement carpet.
Fourth and Fifth Infusion: I’ve unlocked the bitter and dryness of the young white teas that don’t resteep while the aged teas have released their flavor in full force. Owl’s ALL* White Tea Blend is stewed vegetals and dry to start, but then the end of the sip is more funky wet basement carpet, stale old books, hay, and boiled bitter flowers.
Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Infusion: You know, some of these teas, especially the aged ones, resteep into the 20s, but a couple of these white teas don’t push past steep 4. Right now, it is still battling young vs old white teas, tastes between sharp bitter hay potpourri and a wet cardboard box full of swamp leaves.
Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth, and Thirteenth Infusion: Owl’s ALL* white tea blend has switched to sour bitter sticks and dry funky forest floor leaves. With each steeping, the tea gets more bitter, overtaking the funky notes, but also getting super light as some of the teas lost all their flavor.
I keep flipping the leaves around and seeing all sorts of new colours and shapes!
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In the end, drinking ALL* my white teas was the most complex and craziest white tea I’ve had. The effort to pluck a leaf from each* of my white teas took some time but ended with a session I will never forget.
Happy April First all! (yes yes, April fools but I indeed did drink ALL* my white teas, so no joke).
*Fine Print – All white teas in my collection, with exception to unopened cakes, sealed samples, teas received for review that I haven’t tasted, flavored teas, and repeat cakes/bags of maocha from the same year/material – clocking in at 92 different white teas.
