ZW75: Moonlight White Tea

Switching it up to a White Tea now. And WOWZA! This smells AWESOME! I can TOTALLY smell the honeydew melon and apricot notes others are talking about! The leaves are so beautiful, too! Very eye-catching!

This infuses to a light burnt orange color.

I’m already looking forward to tomorrow when I get to drink more new-to-me teas! Then again…I’m excited everyday for that same reason!

This is a lovely white tea and the more I sip the more I like it. Delightful!

Forgot to log this a few days ago but I wrote a note in my phone:
Silver white buds and large twisted black leaves like a roasted oolong and yes some olive if you look close enough, but the first thing I noticed was the beautiful contrast.  I don’t know what to make of this.  It smells like a light sweet rich bean.  Taste is sweet and something not cocoa but similar, something reminds me of coffee beans but it doesn’t taste anything like a cup of coffee granted I don’t drink coffee, maybe it’s just the roast, except it doesn’t tasted roasted.  Sweet front, a coolness, good mouthfeel and spice at then some dryness at the back.  I like it. (I did multiple steeps of this but didn’t take notes, I remember it maintaining some sweetness and picking up a bit of spice but I don’t think it got vegetal, I remember thinking this is a pretty good example of tasting the soil and weather of where the tea was grown. I do however remember wanting to be more impressed and will probably search for another Moonlight on here that is rated higher.

As noted in another review, the leaves have an interesting contrast in the bag. This tastes a little more like that classic tea flavor I have in my head than other white teas I’ve tried thus far. I am also getting just a little bit of a nice earthyness to it. Overall a nice tea, takes sugar well.

Thank you Upton! You’ve taken my favorite white tea, once offered only by Rishi Tea for a very pretty penny ($10 for 50 grams) and made it an affordable daily luxury. Yes, the wonderful linden-like aroma is still there with the dominant tone of honeydew melon. Steep this white longer and it begins to resemble a top-notch early spring darjeeling. Have fun.

Tasty white tea, but I should have probably steeped it a bit longer and used cooler water. This was my 2nd taste test of an Upton Tea and it was very nice but reasonably plain. I haven’t yet got a taste for the variation of unflavoured white teas – the taste is usually very subtle and I think you pretty much have to make sure you don’t make it with water that’s too hot. It was nice, but nothing over the top special. I’ll definitely try some of their other white teas.

im really confused by how what im drinking here is the same tea as im seeing these high ratings on.
okay. i think i have 3 more upton samples left after this, but ok so I will tell you that once I opened the sample and smelled the leaves, I basically lost hope that it would be any good. It smelled like bad hot dogs. After trying it, it’s nowhere near as bad as I thought it’d be, it’s a little bit floral, mostly grassy with a sort of meaty texture at the back of the mouth, and a hint of some kind of fruit. Maybe like a creamy strawberry? that strawberry lasts only a couple steeps, it develops what I can only describe as a dirty, muddy flower? I dont think the muddy flowers are gong to go away, unfortunately.
Bitter lemongrass, wood, hay. I got an odd taste of salmon skin. there! Okay, FINALLY, after like a litre of brewing, I’m getting notes of apple, honeydew, but its crowded by very powerful astringency, which makes it difficult to appreciate any of the light fruit notes. The back/middle of the tongue and roof of the mouth are left dry. This definitely isn’t a pleasant tea, but it isn’t terrible.

Nice, mild white tea. HUGE tea leaves!

This is my second Moonlight White experience. My first was with Bana’s loose Moonlight White from Jingmai, which is exquisite.

Compared to that one, this one actually smells and tastes like a puer. The one from Bana didn’t really seem to have any of the musty qualities at all that puer tea has. That said, the Bana one was only two years old. This one may be much older. I am not sure because Upton’s site doesn’t list its age. That said, this is one of those transitional teas that gets argued about a lot when it comes to classification, so many consider it actually a white tea, rather than a puer. Regardless of the technicalities involved in its production, I find that brewing this tea like a puer works much better. I use about 3.5 grams of loose leaf per 100ml of water. The water is 203F/95C and I use flash infusions, water in and right back out. I can’t get anywhere near the depth of flavor from a white tea this way… and brewing Moonlight White like a white tea with lower temperature and longer brew times just seems to muddle the flavors.

Moonlight White has this wonderful perfume to it when you brew it. It’s a little like grapes or a fine wine. There are hints of wood and floral. The taste is creamy with hints of dried fruit and spice. I am usually reminded just a bit of horchata, though this one from Upton has more of the “musty” flavor of a puer tea than the other one did. I think it is welcome and adds complexity to this tea. This moonlight white has a strong note of honey in the second infusion, along with woody aged notes and a lingering sweetness. The mouthfeel is the slightest bit dry, but moderately thick and full feeling. I’m getting a really strong scent of honey in my room as I brew this.

By the fourth infusion the flavor is even more rich and thick like honey. The flavor is backing off a bit by the fifth, signaling that I need to use more and more time if I want to milk the flavor out of this tea, but for now I’m going to end this review and go to enjoy the rest.

I don’t prefer this moonlight white over the other one I’ve tried, but I think it’s a good one nonetheless. This one had more honeyed flavors and more of that “puer mustiness” while the other one has a more creamy flavor with a more fragrant perfume to it.

Sipdown. This is the last of the sample, and I’m suddenly sorry to see it go. It took me three tries to get used to it. Hmmm. I might have to buy more after all.