The White Tea Glossary
Sixteen terms that unlock white tea labels, menus and vendor pages — grades, origins, cultivars and brewing vocabulary, defined in plain English.
Bai Hao Yin Zhen
白毫銀針 · Silver Needle
The top grade of white tea, made exclusively from unopened spring buds covered in silvery down. Delicate, silky and gently sweet, with notes of hay, melon and honeysuckle.
Full Silver Needle guide →Bai Mu Dan
白牡丹 · White Peony
White tea made from one bud plus the first one or two young leaves. Fuller and fruitier than Silver Needle, and widely considered the best value grade and the ideal introduction to white tea.
Full White Peony guide →Gong Mei
貢眉 · Tribute Eyebrow
The middle grade of white tea, between Bai Mu Dan and Shou Mei — small buds with young leaves, traditionally from small-leaf caicha bushes rather than the Da Bai cultivars.
Full Gong Mei guide →Shou Mei
壽眉 · Longevity Eyebrow
The boldest and most affordable classic white tea, made from mature leaves harvested later in the season. Honeyed and rustic, and the most popular grade for aging and pressing into cakes.
Full Shou Mei guide →Fuding
福鼎
A coastal county in northeastern Fujian, China, and the most famous origin of white tea. Fuding-style teas, made from the Fuding Da Bai cultivar, tend to be plump, downy and sweet.
Zhenghe
政和
A mountainous county in Fujian and the second classic white tea origin. Zhenghe-style teas are typically darker, deeper and more full-bodied than their Fuding counterparts, partly due to longer withering.
Da Bai
大白 · 'Big White' cultivars
The tea plant cultivars — Fuding Da Bai and Zhenghe Da Bai — bred for large, downy buds, from which the classic white tea grades are made.
Caicha
菜茶 · 'vegetable tea' bushes
Fujian's local small-leaf, seed-grown tea bushes. Traditionally the source material for genuine Gong Mei, giving smaller leaves and a fresh, lively character.
Withering
萎凋 · wei diao
The heart of white tea processing: freshly picked leaves rest and slowly lose moisture in gentle sun and air over one to three days. White tea is only withered and dried — never rolled, pan-fired or deliberately oxidized.
Bai Hao
白毫 · silver down / trichomes
The fine silvery-white hairs covering young tea buds. Dense, intact down signals careful handling and a high grade, and contributes the silky texture of bud-heavy teas.
Gongfu brewing
工夫泡
The traditional Chinese method: a high leaf-to-water ratio (4–5 g per 100 ml) and many short infusions of 15–30 seconds, letting the tea evolve steep by steep.
Try it in the Brew Lab →Bing
餅 · pressed cake
A disc of compressed tea, typically 100–357 g. White tea — especially Shou Mei and Gong Mei — is often pressed into cakes for aging, which slows and evens the transformation.
Lao Bai Cha
老白茶 · aged white tea
White tea aged three or more years, developing honey, dried fruit, herbal and woody notes. Subject of the saying 'one year tea, three years medicine, seven years treasure'.
Aged white tea guide →First flush
The first picking of the spring season, prized for concentrated flavor and tenderness after the plant's winter dormancy. Silver Needle is by definition a first-flush, buds-only harvest.
Camellia sinensis
The tea plant. All true tea — white, green, oolong, black and puerh — comes from its leaves; the styles differ by cultivar, harvest standard and processing, not by plant species.
Yue Guang Bai
月光白 · Moonlight White
A white-style tea from Yunnan province made from large-leaf assamica material. Technically outside the classic Fujian canon, but a popular, honeyed cousin worth knowing.