I just tried, not exactly my first white tea, but the first that actually has the whole white tea leaves, which are very interesting to look at. I will need to try this again as I am not sure I got the water hot enough. Instructions were for water just short of boiling but as I live above 4000 feet, I’m never quite sure it gets hot enough.
The tea is “Silver Rain White Tea – Above the Clouds Tea” from the Republic of Tea. The can calls it the “finest quality silver needles from China’s Fujian Province”. It is a loose leaf tea. When opening the can, the smell reminds me most of fresh straw. The “needles”, which are leaf buds, are a greenish, grayish white. After the tea steeped, I pulled one needle out and was able to pick out two leaves from the rest of the bud.
The tea itself was grassy tasting. I felt like I was drinking something green picked from the pasture where livestock graze. As I said, perhaps the water was not hot enough to bring out more subtleties of the tea. It was extremely mild tasting except for the grassy taste and did not “color” the water much at all. It was mild enough to not need any sweetening. I should mention I am a sweet black iced tea drinker from way back raised in a southern raised family where sweet iced tea was served at lunch and dinner and in between. So I usually like a sweeter tea than many tea drinkers.
Filed under White Tea by on Mar 11th, 2008. 
Do we need to worry about black tea prices?
OK, I’ll admit I am not the best person to understand stock and commodities markets. But the article from our source below, plus other information I read today, seems to imply we might have something to worry about this year. I am stressing “might” in that sentence.
Although the price of African Tea has fallen for the 3rd straight week, violence from ethnic clashes, which have claimed 1500 lives already, and an extreme drought are causing the tea crop in the Eastern and Western Rift Valley regions to decline. Earlier sales set a new record high, however.
These valleys are where the best quality tea leaves are grown in Africa according to the news report. Why should we care? Because Kenya is the top exporter of black tea in the world. More may be grown in India but the vast majority of it, maybe 95%, is consumed in India as well.
So, will supplies of black tea decline so we end up paying more? Who knows with the way commodity markets work? Certainly not me, but if I learn any more, I will post it here.
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601116&sid=aq2eLaUXaMj0&refer=africa
Filed under Tea by on Mar 12th, 2008.
I found this story today on the differences between tea and coffee drinkers that had me smiling and laughing. As the author, Sarah Riley, found when looking into the perceived differences, many people think of coffee drinkers as Type A personalities, while “tea drinkers are Type Granola.”
Apparently, tea drinkers are more open-minded than the other beverage-of-choice partakers. Maybe that’s due to there being so freaking many different types and versions of tea. And I hate to even think of adding herbal teas into the mix.
And maybe, as Riley implied, tea drinkers are more laid back as we have to wait on tea to steep just the way we like it, whereas coffee drinkers drink that stuff that has been sitting around perking all day…and getting stronger by the minute. Whew!
Read this story to have a smile of your own while you wait for your tea to steep in the teapot.
Filed under Tea by on Mar 13th, 2008.