Ceylon White Tea (Silver Tips)

Description

Silver tips is Ceylon white tea at its most careful: only the unopened bud, picked in the early morning before the sun is on it, then withered and dried whole rather than rolled and oxidised. The liquor brews pale gold, tastes faintly of honey and hay, and carries almost none of the briskness a black Ceylon does.

White tea is the one grade where the picking decides everything. Pluckers take the unopened bud only, and they take it early, because once the sun climbs the bud opens and the tea is no longer silver tips.

After that the leaf is barely handled. No rolling, no oxidation drum, no firing to a crisp. It withers in shade, dries slowly, and keeps the fine silver down that gives the grade its name. That is why a kilo of it costs what it does, and why the buds in the pack still look like buds.

Brew it gently. Water off the boil, three minutes, no milk and no sugar, and drink it from something pale so you can see the colour. If you treat it like a builder's tea it will taste of very little, and that is the tea's way of telling you to slow down.

How to Use

• Brew at 80C for 3 minutes and drink it plain
• Re-steep the same buds a second time, they hold up
• Serve after a heavy rice and curry lunch
• Give it as the tea for somebody who thinks they dislike tea

Cook with It

• Sri Lankan milk tea, the everyday cup
• the Ceylon tea sampler, if you want to taste the grades side by side
• our Ceylon herbal tea collection

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