The whole picture
White tea is the most lightly processed of the true teas.
The leaf is withered and dried, and nothing else at all is done to it.
There is no fixing and no rolling, which is what separates it from every other category.
Oxidation happens slowly during the wither and stops when the leaf is dry.
It stays in the range of 5 to 10 per cent, so the leaf keeps its pale colour and its softness.
Nearly all of it is made in Fujian, in Fuding and Zhenghe above all.
Grades are set by how much bud is in the leaf.
Bai Hao Yinzhen（白毫银针）is all bud, picked over a window of about 10 days in early spring.
Bai Mudan（白牡丹）adds a couple of leaves under the bud.
Gong Mei（贡眉）and Shou Mei（寿眉）are leafier, cheaper and better for ageing.
The cup is faint: melon, hay, dried flowers, and a sweetness that arrives late.
Aged white turns into something else entirely, moving towards dates, honey and wood.
That change is the reason the category is worth buying in quantity.
It is also why a bad storage history ruins it, since the leaf absorbs whatever sits beside it.
How to approach it
Start from the fact that there is no kill-green step, and the rest follows.
Without fixing, the leaf is whatever the weather and the withering room made it.
That is why vintage and producer matter more here than grade names do.
Learn three archetypes: a young bud white, a young Bai Mudan, and an aged Shou Mei.
They taste like three different teas, and most buyers only ever meet one of them.
Taste them on the same day at the same dose, and the category becomes clear.
Buy young white for aroma and aged white for weight, and do not judge one by the other.
Anyone who dislikes a young white often turns out to like a 5 year old one.
Check the year on the wrapper before anything else.
A white tea with no date on it is impossible to evaluate, whatever the price suggests.
Then check the region, since Fuding and Zhenghe produce recognisably different cups.
Fuding leaf is sweeter and cleaner, while Zhenghe leaf is fuller and more herbal.
Those two sentences will save a great deal of confused buying.
Buying and brewing
Brew white tea stronger than you think you should.
The flavour is faint, and underdosing is the single most common mistake.
Use around 5 g of leaf for a 200 ml pot, which looks like a lot and is correct.
Water at 85 °C suits a young white, and a full boil suits an aged one.
Boiling water on a young bud white can scald the sweetness straight out of it.
Cool water on an aged white simply will not extract anything worth drinking.
Steep the first infusion for about 2 minutes and go longer after that.
Aged white also responds to simmering, which is how much of Fujian drinks it.
Use a covered pot if you have one, since the aroma is half of the experience.
Buy in small amounts until you know which end of the category you prefer.
Then buy a whole cake or a large bag of the one you like, and keep it.
Store it sealed, away from light and away from anything with a strong smell.
White tea picks up odours faster than any other tea, and the damage is permanent.
Keep it dry above all, since mould in a compressed white cake is not salvageable.
Where to go next
Once the basics are clear, the next step is a horizontal tasting.
Put a young Silver Needle next to an aged Shou Mei and drink them in that order.
Young first and aged second, because the aged one flattens anything poured after it.
Then compare the same harvest year from Fuding and from Zhenghe.
That comparison is the fastest way to understand what region actually does.
The storage pages here go into humidity and temperature in more detail.
The ageing notes explain what changes inside the leaf across years.
If you want a category ready to drink the day you buy it, choose a green instead.
White tea asks for either attention or patience, and it will not accept neither.
Buy a cake, write the year on it, and open it every 12 months.
Watching one tea change teaches more than buying ten at once.
Most people who give up on white tea bought one bag and brewed it badly.
Three sessions at a proper dose are usually enough to settle the question.