It doesn’t get much more simple that processing white tea.

White tea is named after the tiny white or silver hairs that cover the new bud on a tea plant - it is the bud which will soon unfurl to become the next young leaf.

On our White Tea product pages, if you zoom in on the tea picture, you will easily see these little whiskers. When looked at collectively, it creates a silver white sheen to the bud, hence the name.

So it is just the unopened buds or occasionally the bud and one or two of the very youngest leaves too that are picked and brought back to tea factory.

Very carefully handled to retain the integrity of the bud, they are simply dried in the sun or a drying room.

White teas are not fired like other teas, so they tend to retain a higher moisture content [therefore have a shorter shelf life]. There doesn’t seem to be a hard and fast rule about antioxidant or caffeine levels v green or black teas – whilst the white bud itself often carries a little more of both, the resulting brew tends to use cooler water for a shorter time than black, so the cup can often contain less.