Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Nan Nuo Shan
Tea Description:
Anji Bai Cha owns a delicate, soft and relaxing taste, with a light sweet aftertaste.
Characteristic of this green tee variety is the colour of the leaves, rather white than green; in Chinese, baimeans white. The lack of pigment is due to the low chlorophyll content of the plant.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
The dry leaf of this Anji Bai Cha Green Tea from Nan Nuo Shan is so beautiful! It looks almost like pine needles – but it doesn’t smell like it! It has a delicate aroma, smelling lightly sweet and slightly vegetal.
To brew this, I suppose I could have reached for my Gaiwan (they are very similar to a silver needle, after all) but I decided to grab my Kati Tumbler instead. I couldn’t measure this leaf with my bamboo scoop because the leaves just didn’t really work very well for it, so I simply used my fingers to pinch some tea out of the packet and into the basket of my Kati and eyeballed it when it looked to me to be about a bamboo scoop’s worth.
Then I added hot water (175°F) and let the tea steep for 1 1/2 minutes. The brewed tea is so light in color – a pale, yellowish green. The aroma is also quite light and gave me the initial impression that the overall flavor would be equally as light.
But it isn’t! This is a very flavorful tea despite it’s rather delicate appearance and fragrance.
Sweet! I taste notes of sweet grass and hints of flower in the distance. It’s a very smooth and relaxing flavor. There is some dry astringency toward the finish, it’s almost as if the tea is gently patting my palate dry to ready it for the next sip.
There is a light ‘airiness’ to this tea, like the flavor of the air in a meadow. The grassy notes and whispers of flower that mingle in the air as a gentle breeze filters through. As I continue to sip, I taste notes of melon – a sweet, juicy melon!
A delight to sip, this sweet tea that calms me with each sip. This is de-stress at it’s best!
Anji Bai Cha Green Tea from Butiki Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Butiki Teas
Tea Description:
Our premium Anji Bai Cha originates from Anji County in Zhejian Province in China and is grown at an elevation of approximately 2,900 feet. One bud and one tender leaf are utilized from the Bai Ye Yi Hao (white leaf #1) varietal to create this truly beautiful jade green tea. Anji Bai Cha translates to “Anji White Tea”. This tea is classified as green tea by process; the name refers to the color of the unprocessed tea leaves which are white and somewhat translucent in the sun. This rare tea has a short harvesting season of one month in the early spring season. Our Anji Bai Cha is sweet and buttery with vegetal notes and has a silky mouth feel. Sweet white corn and green pea notes are prominent with a gentle floral finish. The sweetness remains and lingers long after each sip. Subtle tart cherry notes can also be detected.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This Anji Bai Cha Green Tea from Butiki Teas brews up so LIGHT in color. It’s so pale, in fact, that I questioned whether or not I had put tea in the teapot! The brewed tea is almost as clear and colorless as the water that I poured into the tea kettle.
The flavor is almost as delicate as the color is … but it is beautifully sweet with notes of butter and mild vegetables. The above description suggests corn and green peas … I don’t know if I taste green peas or not (I’m not a fan of peas!) but, I definitely get hints of sweet corn.
I’m also getting the delicate floral finish that is mentioned in the description. I like the way that this starts off sweet, with a smooth texture and a buttered vegetable taste and then as the sip heads into the finish, I notice notes of flower that linger into the aftertaste.
As the tea cools slightly, the flavors begin to emerge a little more. I notice the cherry notes now. It is a sharp, tart note and when it finally did emerge … it took me by surprise. I was like … whoa! What was that? This tea definitely benefits from a couple of minutes cooling time to allow the flavors to come in to focus.
Now I am starting to notice a little more of a green vegetable kind of taste – again, I don’t know if I”d call it green pea because this is not something I eat on any kind of basis – but, I do taste a “green” kind of taste here. It’s crisp and a refreshing contrast to the sweet note of corn. I also note just a hint of a nutty kind of flavor to this.
A very enjoyable cup of tea! I would recommend this one to someone who tends to shy away from green teas because of the strong grassy notes … this is much more subtle in it’s approach. It’s a pleasant, complex cuppa – I like contemplating the complexity of this one. A nice way to spend a chilly evening!
Anji Bai Cha from Canton Tea Co.
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Canton Tea Co.
Company Description:
Anji Bai Cha is a beautiful tea in every sense. The leaves are long, delicate and a bright vivid green, the scent has notes of citrus and nuts, and the taste is a complex mix of tangy fresh and creamy soft. The liquor is a lively pale green with the bright clarity of a classic high-grown mountain tea.
Taster’s Review:
This tea was also noted as a white tea on the Canton Tea Co. website, although it is found listed as a green tea. Despite this minor confusion, I can see how it might be considered either a white tea or a green tea, because it does have qualities of both types of tea.
The liquor brews up so light in color, so in that respect it reminds me of a white tea. It also has a relatively delicate flavor which is also quite characteristic of a white tea.
However, the color of the leaves are so vibrant and green (they look like blades of grass!) with no real indication of the silvery color that is like other white teas. Also the flavor is much more in line with a green tea – it has a pleasant vegetative flavor that is not overly grassy. It tastes more like steamed broccoli than it does grass.
There is also a very delicious, juicy fruit note to this tea that is reminiscent of sweet apples. The crispness in the tea enhances this taste beautifully! It tastes very much like a high quality green tea to me.
Yes, I like this one very much… call it a white tea, call it a green tea… I call it GOOD tea!