White tea · Fujian
Baihao Yinzhen
báiháo yínzhēn · 白毫银针
“White-down silver needle” — the top grade of white tea, made only of plump, downy buds picked in the first days of spring. Pale, soft and honey-sweet, and a tea that ages quietly into dried fruit and warmth.
- Region
- Fuding and Zhenghe, Fujian
- Harvest
- Earliest spring — buds only, a few days
- Oxidation
- Barely oxidised
- Cultivar
- Da Bai (big white) bushes
In the cup
Soft honey, melon and hay — delicate, sweet, with a cool clean finish and no edge at all.
What it gives
The gentlest of teas — low caffeine, cooling in the Chinese sense, rich in the antioxidants of a minimally-handled leaf.
Baihao Yinzhen — white-down silver needle — is the pinnacle of the white-tea class. It is made from buds alone, the plump unopened tips of the Da Bai bushes of Fuding and Zhenghe in Fujian, plucked in the first short window of spring before the leaves open. Each bud keeps its silvery coat of down, the háo that names it.
Because white tea is the least-handled class — withered, then dried, with no fixing or rolling — the bud’s natural sweetness and delicacy survive intact. The dry needles are silver-green and feathery; the liquor is the palest of all the classes, almost colourless, and the flavour is a soft honey-and-melon sweetness with a whisper of hay.
Patient by nature
Two things reward patience. Brew it slowly and a touch cooler than a green, giving the dense buds time to release. And keep it: pressed into cakes and stored dry, silver needle deepens over years, its hay note turning toward dried apricot, dates and a gentle warmth — a quiet cousin to aged pu-erh.
How to brew
Baihao Yinzhen
Water
85 °C
Leaf
4 g per 150 ml
Steep
3–5 min, long and slow
Vessel
Glass or gaiwan
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