White Okayti Estate Darjeeling Silver Tips

I received this tea as part of a white tea-sampler pack that I ordered a few weeks back. This is the first bag I have sampled and I must say, the way that Jing uses to package their teas does a lot for its freshness.
Jing’s Tea storage bags are zip-lock bags made from plastic foil – as are most storage bags these days – but Jing’s are additionally welded shut above the zipper, so in order to get to your leaves you have to clip off that top-most part. This added air-tight seal seems to keep in the aroma exceptionally well – which I subsume from the fact the to two teas I have tried so far were very aromatic. You know the feeling when you open a bag that has fresh tea in it, the smell that emmanates from it is almost tangible. Lack of said aroma is oftentimes an indicator of leaves that have already gone stale.
Not the case here.
The dry leaf resembles Silver Needle-leaves the only difference being the size. These are a little shorter than you would expect Yin Zhen to be.
The liquor brews up to a bright and radiant yellow. I used Gongfu-brewing with a steep-time of about 4-5 seconds initially and increased that gradually over subsequent steepings.
Deliciously floral and fruity aroma, combined the slightly starchy or papery aroma that white tea normally gives off.
The taste is easily described as two parts of the muscat-notes that you love if you are into Darjeeling and one part of the slightly drier and – for want of a better word – nuttier notes of Yin Zhen.
The texture follows the same equation: it is a little bit of what you would expect from a cup of Yin Zhen, the gentle feel that the little hairs are covering your tongue, and a very distinct awarenes of the liquid while swallowing it, but mellowed out by the Darjeeling to only a trace amount of that intensity.

I enjoyed this a lot and it lasted through an amazing number of steepings – must have been around 18, possibly more.
The only thing I was missing from this tea was the complexity that I have come to love from my Verdant Tea purchases. This does not detract from the quality of this tea. I would highly recommend it if you were looking for a tea to serve to a friend you were looking to win over for the Way of Tea.

This tea is amazing. In 2006, I received a gift of white darjeeling from Harrod’s in London, and quickly drank it up. Alas, it was no longer available, and all my regular suppliers simply didn’t carry it. So I studied maps of where it was grown, and found only one other retailer that carried /white/ tea from that region: Jing. Perhaps I missed others, but Jing was the only one I ever discovered. So, I ordered a couple hundred grams and, sure enough, it was the same!

Why did I enjoy it so much? It has an usual floral quality that is light, but it doesn’t linger too long, making for a clean finish. I’m not generally a fan of floral teas (save Jasmin, I suppose), but in this case, I think they did a wonderful job.