White · Fuding, China
Silver Needle
Low caffeine
A bud-only white tea with soft sweetness, haylike aromatics, and a luminous pale cup.
Recipe
- Temperature
- 85 °C · 185 °F
- Leaf
- 4.5 g
- Water
- 250 ml
- First steep
- 3:00
- Each next steep
- +0:45
- Steeps
- 3
Suggested starting point.
Time this brew with Pekoe
Brew guide
Use a generous leaf dose and patient infusions to draw out the texture.
Aroma notes
dried hay · melon rind · powdered sugar
Tasting notes
silky body · light honey · fresh linen finish
Harvest
March–April
Making
Planting 
Plucking 
Withering 
Sorting
Origin
Fuding, Fujian · China
Fuding's sea air dries the leaf without hurrying it. The buds keep their down, and their sweetness.
Lore
White tea is the least touched of all: buds plucked, withered, dried, nothing more. Silver Needle took its modern form around Fuding in the late eighteenth century.
In art
