Withered and dried white tea
The shortest route in tea, and the one with nowhere to hide. There is no fixation and no rolling, so the wither is not a preparation for the process — it very nearly is the process.
What makes this route what it is
Two omissions rather than one. No fixation, which is what every green tea has, and no rolling, which is what every black tea has. What remains is a wither long enough to do the work both of those steps do elsewhere, and a bake to make it keep.
The route, in order
Each note describes what the step is doing in this route. The same operation does a different job in a different chain.
The plucking standard is what separates the grades of this category more than any factory decision: bud only, bud and one or two leaves, or open leaf, and each is sold as a different tea.
Sun and shade in alternation rather than continuous exposure. The leaf is moved indoors when the sun is strong, because the route has no later step that could correct a scorched wither.
Part-way through, the contents of two or three sieves are tipped into one. The deepened bed holds its own heat and moisture, and the second half of the wither runs slower and warmer than the first.
Traditional finishing for bud grades, and the reason a well-made silver needle keeps changing usefully in storage rather than merely going stale.
Many houses go straight from the wither to a low bake, particularly where the weather is unreliable or the volume too large for sun.
- 5.
Drying
A low bake to storage dryness. Run hot it produces a baked, flattened tea; run low it leaves a leaf that will still develop for years.
Hand picking of stem, yellowed leaf and any leaf that reddened during the wither. Late, visible, and largely cosmetic — which is honest, because there is nothing left to fix.
How it differs from its neighbours
A route described on its own teaches very little. The useful fact is always which other route it is nearly identical to, and where it leaves it.
This route leaves out an operation the other performs. Omissions are usually irreversible — the step cannot be added back later.
The green route fixes; this one never does. Because the enzymes are never destroyed, a white tea keeps changing after manufacture, which is why aged white is a real category and aged green is not.
Orthodox black tea
One step left outThis route leaves out an operation the other performs. Omissions are usually irreversible — the step cannot be added back later.
The orthodox black route ruptures the leaf so that oxidation can run; this one never ruptures it at all. That is why white tea oxidises slowly and incompletely despite nothing ever stopping it, and why describing it as unoxidised and as lightly oxidised are both partly right.
Where it goes wrong
A wither that stalls in humid weather ferments in the bed and turns the tea sour; a wither pushed too fast in strong sun dries the leaf before it has changed and produces the thin, hay-like cup that gives cheap white tea its reputation. Both faults are decided within the first day and neither is recoverable.
In full
White tea is made by deciding, repeatedly, not to intervene. Plucked leaf is spread on sieves and left to lose moisture over a day or two, indoors or under a controlled amount of sun, and part-way through the maker combines sieves so the bed deepens and the last of the wither runs slower and warmer. Then it is dried, and it is finished. Nothing ruptures the leaf, so oxidation proceeds only slowly and only where the leaf has damaged itself; no heat is applied until the very end, so the enzymes stay active throughout. The result is a category whose whole character was built during an operation that looks, to a visitor, like leaves sitting on trays. It is also the category with the fewest levers: there is no rolling to correct a poor wither, no oxidation room to steer, and no roast to cover a mistake, and a maker who gets the two days wrong has nothing left to do about it.