Nepal White Tea, 2nd Flush 2015

Last Sunday, a power outage ate my elaborate review of this tea, so I’m going on my fuzzy recollections. Always, always save your work, even if it’s just a tea review!

I never know how to brew white teas from the Indian subcontinent, so I used brewing instructions from the Camellia Sinensis website. I steeped 6 g of tea in a 120 ml teapot at 175F for 30, 20, 20, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds, plus a couple long, uncounted steeps.

The dry leaves smelled like flowers, oats, and grass. The first couple steeps had notes of autumn leaf pile, apricot, hay, oats, wildflowers, and grass, with a hint of smoke. The second steep had hints of smoked salmon, which thankfully disappeared as the session progressed. Later steeps lost the fruit and tended toward grass, oats, hay, and linen. There was also quite a bit of astringency.

Today, I steeped my remaining 3 g Western using 355 ml of water at 175F for 3, 5, 8, and 10 minutes. I don’t think I used enough leaf, as the flavours were pretty muddled. I got flowers, oats, grass, and something fruity that I couldn’t have identified as apricot if not for the gongfu session. If I’d just drank it this way, my rating would be lower.

This was a solid white tea with some interesting flavours, some good and some not so much. I’m glad to have tried it, but not sad to say goodbye.