Silver Needle White Tea

White tea is thousands of years old and is said to have originated in China, in the Fujian and Zhejiang Province. The ancient Chinese legend has it that young virgin girls were given gloves and golden scissors to snip the white tea leaves. They were the only ones who were allowed to harvest the white tea. It was then presented to the Emperor as a tea of complete purity. Today, white tea is produced in many countries, but primarily China, India and Sri Lanka.

All four types of tea, white, black, oolong, and green, are produced from the same tea plant named Camellia sinensis. Depending on how the tea leaves are processed, the flavor, color, and aroma of the tea will change. The atmosphere in which the tea grows in plays a crucial role in the quality of the tea. White tea is the purest tea of all, with silver needle being the rarest, because it consists of young downy buds from the plant, minimally processed, and only harvested two days out of a year. White tea leaves are hand-picked carefully because rough machinery destroys the leaves.

White tea leaves are picked when they are young, furry, white buds, before they have grown into leaves, and are very fragile in these early stages of growth. They must be delicately handled in order to retain the enormous amounts of vitamins, nutrients and antioxidants contained in the buds. When the leaves come off the fields they are then steamed, dried (mostly air dried) and ready to be steeped in a pot of hot water. Silver Needle tea is named specifically from the ultra-soft white fuzz covering the buds and their silver tips. The leaves of this luxurious tea make an extraordinary beverage straight from nature.