Tag: White Tea

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DavidsTea’s Moonlight White

Moonlight White by DavidsTea
White and Pu-erh Tea / Straight
$24.98 for 50g

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First Impressions

This tea has me a bit confused. I initially purchased it because it was one of the new straight teas at DavidsTea and the salesperson at my local DavidsTea waxed poetic about it. When I bought it back in April, it was categorized as a white tea. At the time of writing this, it’s categorized as a pu-erh tea on the DavidsTea website. To be fair, the description of the tea has it as a “white pu’erh tea”. The combination of the two has me intrigued, and I nearly forgot that I had even bought this tea because it fell between a couple bags. (No jokes about how I have too much tea, please!) But for the tea enthusiasts out there, Yue Guang Bai is another name for Moonlight White (and another literal tea name translation) in case you wanted to source out other Moonlight White teas.

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Moonlight White is actually a really beautiful dry leaf. There’s the white, feathery down on the leaves, and then there’s the darker part of the leaf that provides such a stark contrast. It is a fairly airy tea, so you wind up with a fairly bulky bag because the tea leaves take up so much room. The dry leaf has what I would describe as a honeyed smell, it smells light and sweet to me.

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Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping Moonlight White in near-boiling water for 4-7 minutes. The temperature range for this tea (as per their website) is 194-203°F (90-95°C). As my Breville IQ Kettle has a white tea setting (185°F/85°C), I opted to use that as I didn’t want to burn the leaves. My initial steep was for 4 minutes.

First Taste

Moonlight White steeps to a pale yellow initially. It has a lovely honeyed smell to it, it smells sweet to me with a touch of vegetation. There’s an overall smoothness to this tea, no bitterness or astringency to note. I found it had a pleasant mouthfeel and it goes down easy. My water that I use is fairly tasteless, I live in an area with soft water. I found that this tea had a bit of a mineral water flavour to it, which was surprising (given that I live in an area with soft water…). It isn’t off-putting, it was just surprising. I greatly enjoyed the honeyed taste to this white/pu-erh tea, and I don’t think it needs additional sweetener as it’s sweet enough.

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A Second Cup?

As Moonlight White is a straight tea, I was eager to steep the leaves a few times. I ended up steeping the same leaves for seven times. I found that the tea leaves held up well. The colour of the liquor became a deeper and deeper golden yellow as I went through the steeps (becoming the darkest for resteep 3). The flavour of this tea didn’t really change, although the honey and mineral notes did become stronger, but remained at the same flavour balance as the initial steep. I found that the leaves did really well, and it took to the seventh overall steep to really find the flavour lacking.

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My Overall Impression

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I loved DavidsTea’s Moonlight White. This tea is a curious combination for me – white and pu-erh. I found that the tea tasted great and the leaves held up incredibly well to resteeping. I think that tea is delicious and would probably pair well with some sweets or desserts. The one thing that I’m not completely in love with is the price tag. $25 for 50g is fairly steep and it makes me hesitant to really want to fall head-over-heels in love with this tea (because I just know that I’ll want a tin… or two). Overall, I think the tea is great and if you can afford this tasty tea, I would definitely recommend it. The nice thing is that the tea is of a good quality so it can be resteeped (better value!), and you don’t need a lot of the tea to steep a teapot (and then steep it again and again), so a little bit of this tea goes a long way. It’s definitely something that I really love, but don’t want to get into the habit of keeping in my tea stash because of the price. Hopefully there are cheaper Moonlight White alternatives out there, or else I’ll be getting into some trouble soon!

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Arbor Teas’ Silver Needle

Silver Needle by Arbor Teas
White Tea / Straight
$21.00USD for 2oz

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Arbor Teas has provided me with Silver Needle for the purposes of providing an honest review. I received this product at no charge to me and received no other compensation.

First Impressions

Silver Needle came to me from Arbor Teas in a sealed plastic packet. The text on the packaging told me that it was all biodegradable to be environmentally friendly, which I think is really neat. The nice thing about tea is that it is biodegradable, so it is really encouraging when the packaging is as well. Arbor Teas states on their website that they are certified organic.

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Silver Needle is an organic Chinese white tea, with no additional ingredients. The leaves themselves are long and skinny, with the white feathery down on the leaves. They’re quite beautiful to look at. Because of the shape and size of the leaves, it’s quite a bulky amount of tea in this package! There’s a sweet honeyed smell to the dry leaf that’s quite inviting.

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Preparation

Arbor Teas recommends steeping Silver Needle in 180F water for 2-3 minutes. My initial steep of Silver Needle was for 2 minutes.

First Taste

Silver Needle steeps to a very pale yellow that you can almost miss, if you don’t have the best light. The tea itself has a light scent to it, floral and honey is the best way for me to describe it. My first sips were so enjoyable. There’s a lightness to this tea that is the opposite of ‘heavier’ teas (black teas, I’m looking at you!). There is zero astringency, absolutely no bitterness. Silver Needle has a beautiful honeyed flavouring to it that balances well with this light floral flavour. The lightness of this tea makes it easy to drink.

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A Second Cup?

Silver Needle gets darker with each resteep until it gets to be a bright, golden yellow. I resteeped Arbor Teas’ Silver Needle a total of six times (seven steeps overall), adding an additional 30 seconds per steep. The tea gets almost thicker in texture, with an increase in floral-honey taste. Silver Needle is still light and very much enjoyable, despite getting thicker as it gets darker. I found my last steep got to be a little bit lacking in flavour, but I was able to get five resteeps that were a complete joy for the taste buds.

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My Overall Impression

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I loved Arbor Teas’ Silver Needle. Such a beautiful tea from the dry leaf to the first (and last) cup. The honey floral flavour of this white tea are delicious, and the capability of this tea to handle steep after steep is a testament to the quality of the young leaves. In a way, this Silver Needle got a little bit more complex in flavour with each steep because it got darker and thicker and just more delicious. I think it would be great as a post-meal tea if you’re looking for something a little sweet, or as a tea to pair up with an afternoon tea that is skewed more heavily to the sweets and pastries over savoury food options.

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24 Days of Tea: Organic Ginger Pear

Organic Ginger Pear by DavidsTea
White Tea / Flavoured
$12.98 for 50g

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First Impressions

Day 8 of the 24 Days of Tea calendar is Organic Ginger Pear, and let me tell you that the smell of this dry tea smells exactly like it’s labelled on the tin – ginger and pear. I found with this tea, and a lot of the other teas that have big chunks, is that the tea base itself ends up settling to the bottom of the tin so when I first looked into it all I saw were the dried pieces of ginger and pear. But after digging into it a bit, there was the white tea leaves, so that wasn’t too disconcerting.

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Organic Ginger Pear is made up of: ginger, apple, cinnamon, white tea, pear, rosehip, and natural quince, pear, apple, and cinnamon flavouring.

Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping Organic Ginger Pear in hot water (75-80°C/167-176°F) for 4 to 7 minutes (both on the packaging and on the product page). If this was purely just the additives, I’d be inclined to agree, but there is a white tea base. White teas are generally steeped for 2-5 minutes. I steeped Ginger Pear for close to 3 minutes. I have a page here on One More Steep about steeping times for various types of teas.

First Taste

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While Ginger Pear is steeping, there’s this really nice warm ginger aroma to it that just wafts up. It has a lovely light orange colour, and it just smells good. On first sip, I was pleasantly surprised that I could taste the pear as I couldn’t smell it very well as it was steeping. The ginger flavour just lingers pleasantly on the tongue as I drank this tea. There’s a subtle natural sweetness, that I would attribute to all the fruit that’s in this tea blend, that partners well with the ginger. I don’t think that this tea really needs additional sweetener at all.

A Second Cup?

I tried one more steep of Organic Ginger Pear. I found with the second steep that there was a bit of a flip in the flavour profile. The ginger was stronger the second time around than the pear, although that was still present as well. There’s less sweetness to the tea as the ginger’s spiciness begins to crowd out and overpower the other flavours.

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My Overall Impression

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I liked DavidsTea’s Organic Ginger Pear. I think it does fantastic for a single steeping to get the full ginger and pear flavour profile. If you’re a fan of ginger, I think you’ll also enjoy subsequent steeps with this tea. I would hesitate to recommend following the steeping directions set out by DavidsTea as 7 minutes would be far too long for a tea with a white base. It is a very tasty cup of tea though, and I really enjoyed the ginger and pear pairing.

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