White Tea

I bought white tea for the first time when I was about twelve. I remember it vividly. I had just participated in a role playing camp (like dungeons and dragons but cooler). In the game my group had been essentially kidnapped by the illustrious White Mage. (Also know as Lord Hypotenuse.) We had been trapped in his castle, which was constructed out of white marble. Everything in this castle was so consistently white that one of the members of my group covered himself in flour to camouflage when sneaking around the castle at night. This adventure really captured my imagination, for weeks my friends and I relived moments of that exploit.

I was still trying to wrap my mind around this idea of a castle where everything was the same color when I in the grocery story with my mother and I was perusing the tea section. (Even before I was as openly enamored with tea as I am today I still made it my busying to check the tea sections in stores.) I came upon a tube of white tea from Republic of Tea and I had this overwhelming urge to get it, seeing as it fit into the imaginary world I have been obsessing over. Since my family had not tried white tea before we bought it and soon discovered that there was a reason we had not already incorporated it into our tea drinking habits. It was very different than the basic green and black tea were were accustomed to. I really liked it but I was the minority so we didn't buy more.

Currently my favorite white tea is from Teatulia. It has a richness and an earthiness that is somewhat unusual in a white tea. The person who sold it to me said that they added lemongrass to fill out the taste, so that might be part of what I'm tasting. It also has "notes of peach",  that is most likely a part of it too. Regardless its a charming and fascinating tea, I'm unhappy that I am about to run out of it. The image above portrays one of the Teatulia white tea tea bags.