Have You Ever Tasted White Tea? Howz That?

Dear friends,

I was always fascinated by various varieties of tea available in the market. How can a cup of morning tea offer you so many different varieties to start your each day in a unique way was very intriguing to me!

From average masala chai to black tea, green tea, lemon tea, basil tea, mint tea, lemongrass tea, herbal tea, blended tea, Tibetan tea, Chinese tea varieties, mate.... there is a long list of tea I had consumed and I wish to taste.

My all time favourite was a Tibetan tea but since it's not easily available everywhere, my next commonly available favourite is the Bergamot oil flavoured Earl Grey blend by Twinings. But frankly, I haven't tasted many varieties of tea yet. However, I always enjoy most varieties.

Oh, but White Tea is an exception

White Tea is one of the rarest variety of tea. It is also the most revered one and hence was reserved for nobility in ancient China. Sounds exotic, isn't it?

Fortunately, it's also grown in India. Last year, when my parents went to visit Kerala, they got this White Tea from Kanan Devan Hills plantations in Munnar.

_{View of Kanan Devan Hills courtesy Wikipedia}

Since it's a royal tea, so was its price. At INR 12,000/- for a Kg it wasn't cheap at all. So my parents bought this small 25 gram sized box of their Ripple White Tea

Although this 25 g box looks small, it was worth INR 300/-.
But hardly anyone at my home drank it. I had prepared it a few times, but its taste was so subtle that my taste buds weren't sensitive enough to detect and appreciate it. And so was it colour ...it hardly gives any colour ...a very light grey colour at most. That's why it's called a white tea.

The person who sold it had even told the recipe to prepare it and he told to consume even the tea leaves at the end. But none of us liked the idea of consuming the tea leaves. I did try once but it was my first and last attempt at it.

Today, somehow I wanted to try this tea again. I looked for the box and found that it was still full! Everyone forgot about this tea implies none of us liked it.

To like this tea, you gonna belong to a royal family, you know!

But today, I tried to prepare it differently. Instead of steeping the leaves in hot water to infuse the flavour, I chose to boil them for a good 5 minutes. I don't wanted it to be colourless 😊

Here are some photographs of what I got:

So yes, this way I got a better flavour and some colour too. We Indians have to prepare it in Indian style. Ha ha ha!

Do you love drinking White tea? How do you prepare it?

I'm looking for the best way to prepare this tea so that I can feel like some Royal person some day. All help in that direction will be highly appreciated. 😉