Well friends, as it turns out, I quite badly misjudged this tea. This is mostly because my favourite types of white tea are white tea buds because of how sweet (and caffeinated) they are. So the first time I had this with friends, I was not sure what they were raving about – it tasted like a typical white tea.

But luckily for the tea, there was more than one serving. And on my second session with the tea, when I had a bit more privacy and time to savour it, I realised I misjudged the tea.

This First Flush Himalayan White is the first tea in another tea subscription that I’m sharing with a friend (I’m up to two subscriptions now, I shouldn’t be getting any more). The tea came by itself, without much of an explanation but I did find this description on the Rare Tea Company website:

“An exquisitely fruity and floral white tea with notes of mango, vanilla and elderflower. A beautifully light tea with almost no astringency but rich in flavour.”

First Impressions

The dry leaves are pale green with some darker leaves in between. I can also see some buds but rather than a white tea made purely of buds, this seems to be made from the buds and the first two leaves. It smelt floral and grassy, nicer than I remembered.

Tasting Notes

The first cup made me realise I misjudged the tea. Perhaps it’s because I didn’t follow the two-minute steep but just steeped the tea for one minute, till it was a pale yellow tea. There were clear floral notes in its fragrance and the tea was sweet with the floral and grassy notes mingling, with an additional note that reminded me of caramel candy (though I wouldn’t say it was a caramel note). It actually reminded me of spring, when things are cooming to life.

The second cup, which I steeped for a minute and a half, brought another surprise – I expected less sweetness and more of a woody note (both of which I got), but I don’t know if my mind was playing tricks on me because I also got the scent of a lightly-roasted/high mountain oolong. The floral notes were still strong – I could taste that pretty much every time I drank some tea. It was a very intriguing cup for sure, because I’m not sure why “oolong” popped into my mind.

The third cup was when I steeped it for two minutes as recommended and I noted that it smelled stronger than it tasted!

The spent leaves were very, very soft to the touch. I could see these were mostly unoxidised, green leaves. It looks like mostly the young/smaller leaves were used, though I did see fragments of bigger leaves as well.

Concluding thoughts

Well, this was a tea that made me eat my words. It was truly very delightful and I’m a bit sad I don’t have any more leaves because I would like to spend more time with the tea and see if my impressions are accurate or if something weird happened to me that made me get so many delightful notes from my sit-down with this white tea.

I’ve got the second and third tea from the subscription as well, and I hope to open at least one of them soon so keep an eye out for the next tea!