A reader's white tea questions

This is a long question, and I’ll try to answer half of it tonight (it’s 12 midnight HK now) and the other half tomorrow. 

My response to Question a). 

Silver Needles, like many other teas, have been given names of various funny implications all over the world and I really cannot keep track of them. By the look of the photos in the website you provided, the two teas look like Silver Needles. However, you know look can be deceiving and the photos there are not very detailed or precise in terms of lighting and colour rendition, so it is more difficult. There are green tea look alikes. Please check again the relative pages in the Tea Guardian main site:

• Silver Needles
• White Tea

“Baihao” means white down, and “Yin-zhen” means silver needles. The site is right with that, BUT you are correct in pointing out that the original name of the tea in China is Baihao Yinzhen; so the English name Silver Needles is a conventional short form. Separating them to name two teas does not seem right to me.

My response to Question b).

First of all, I do not know of a particular varietal (the proper name should be cultivar) named 1 and another name 2. I think maybe that site is trying to make things simple for the customer. Maybe they are not too sure themselves.

The two most used cultivars for producing Silver Needles are Fuding Dabai and Zhenghe Dabai. These are turf oriented cultivar: people who employ the specific cultivar have turf preference in production styles. Fuding and Zhenghe are two separate regions. Each pride themselves of the local styles. The Fuding one is lighter oxidation and the Zhenghe one longer. So the latter is darker in leaf colour (so more greyish) and the former one paler. In terms of taste, the latter is stronger, longer. The former softer and more floral.

None is better than the other; people just have taste preference.

HOWEVER, I am NOT sure that the genuine Zhenghe version is so easily available in a small CA web store who is consistently mixing up light colour green tea as white teas in their catalogue. Genuine and traditional Zhenghe version is quite scarce these days; a buyer has to know his/her way quite well and has a distinct market need to buy such product.

…to be continued

For the questions c & d, as said earlier, teas produced from the two cultivars are of different taste and appearance characters. They appeal to different preferences, so I really cannot say which is better even from a taster’s perspective. Silver Needles are produced from both cultivars in the two Fujian regions. 

However, all consumers have to be aware that regions outside of Fujian (and even outside of China) also produce the tea with or without using the two cultivars. I have mentioned in many occasions that there are plenty of downy shoot teas in the market that are in reality green teas. Silver Needle is a name that has been so well marketed that it is an enough temptation to name anything looking almost the same with it. 

To answer the question, I really cannot point out these two teas, with their simplified “1” and “2” cultivar names, no origin declaration, and obscure photos, which is better, or even if they may be real white tea Silver Needle. 

By the way, real Silver Needle maybe a bit more expensive than the run of the mill whole leaf green tea, but it should be well within reasonable price range, and below that of traditional quality, fine first flush green teas, such as Longjing etc. I am stating this here because I have seen too many people hijacking the price unreasonably, albeit the recent increase in price and currency exchange.