It has taken me almost two weeks to write this review! That’s… not good but hopefully finishing this starts a good trend? Because I do have a different white tea – this other one from Nepal – that I want to talk about as well!

This white tea is from Renegade Farm – not stranger if you’ve been reading my blog – and this is what they have to say about the tea:

This summer white tea feels like summer days in Imereti, Georgia – sweet, smooth and full of light summer aromas. The tea has been withered for more than 24 hours which brings out the sweetness and tropical flavours. Its fruity taste and silky feeling are captivating. Use different temperatures for brewing to bring out the many faces of this tea. 

From the Renegade Tea Page

First Impressions

These are clearly whole leaves but they are also pretty small, some even look like buds, so that’s promising. The leaves smell like the earth after rain to me, and while I like that smell generally, I wonder how it will translate over to taste.

Tasting Notes

On the packet, the recommendation for this tea was to brew it for four minutes. But because I also did it my own way, I have two sets of tasting notes.

In my first session, I chose to brew it for about 1.5 minutes using water around 80 degrees celsius. It produced a very, very like tea liquor that made me wonder if I understeeped it. In terms of taste, however, it was sweet and woody – much more flavourful than I expected!

The second steep was made with hotter water and for 4 minutes, a big leap for me. Surprisingly, the longer steep did not affect the taste much and the tea had much of the same notes as the first steep, albeit with a bit less sweetness (no surprise, I find the sweetness of tea to disappear quite quickly). I did think that this cup felt a bit more well-rounded than the previous one.

The third steep was similar to the second, but the fourth steep surprised me because there were no more woody (or perhaps grassy? It reminds me of both, or like I said, nature after rain) notes, just a mild sweetness.

In my second session with the tea, I started with a 4-minute steep, as recommended. The tea basically tasted like a stronger version of my 1.5-minute steep.

For the next cup, I steeped the tea leaves for 5 minutes and because it wasn’t as sweet as the first cup, I did feel as though I was drinking a tea made from fresh twigs. The third steep was much milder and I think the teas were pretty much done by the second steep.

As for the spent leaves, they were small leaves (as I suspected) and green and brown from the withering. The leaves were tender to the touch and made me think of a tea blogger who used to put ponzu on spent leaves and eat them; I’m not at that stage but these leaves did look appetising.

Overall thoughts

This was an interesting cup that made me wonder how well I know the terms “grassy” and “woody” for notes. I tend to write down what comes to mind, but honestly, the grassy/woody note here felt like a mix of both and I struggled to figure out which was the correct description to use! I don’t think I got the notes that Renegade Tea described, but it was still a lovely cup.