WhiteCaffeine: 40–60 mg per cupHarney Exclusive · Sri Lanka

Ceylon Vintage Silver Tips

Name: Ceylon Vintage Silver Tips
Brand: Harney & Sons Fine Teas
SKU: 41611
Price: 180.00 USD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.84 (95 reviews)

A rare white tea, made only for us

4.8 · 95 reviews

Ceylon Vintage Silver Tips

$ 180.00

Select Packaging Type:Loose

Select Unit:1 lb. Bag

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Description

Ceylon Vintage Silver Tips is a rare white tea with a flavor that's light, sweet, and sublime. A Harney & Sons exclusive, this tea is plucked and made just for us from the terminal buds of tea bushes grown high in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). They are handled with great care, so the bud remains whole and becomes silvery. Since there are no leaves, the flavor is different from traditional tea.

Mike's Rating

1 Briskness

2 Body

2 Aroma

Details: Almost all white teas come from China. However, there are a few white teas made in other regions. This one is made in the island nation of Sri Lanka. In tea tradition and lore, this island is known as Ceylon. In the mountains and hills, a few teamakers attempt white tea. They send their pluckers out to scour the fields to find the few plants that make a big bud. This is much harder work than in Fuding, China, where the hills are covered with the tea plants that make white tea.

Dry Leaves: There are no leaves, only slender, slightly curved silver buds that are just over an inch long. Since there are fewer downy tricomes than in other white teas, Ceylon Silver Tips looks more like tiny skewers than the pussywillows associated with Chinese Silver Needle.

Liquor: The liquor is the lightest possible, with just hints of pale yellow.

Aroma: Ceylon Silver Tips has the gentlest citrus-spice suggestion of oranges stuck with cloves and wafts subtle sweetness.

Flavors: There are hints, just hints, of oranges and cloves, but also green grapes and honeycrisp apples, and some floral notes at the finish.

Caffeine Level: Caffeinated

Body: Medium-to-light-bodied, somewhere in between the gossamer Silver Needle and the rounder Bai Mudan.

Brewing Time: 3 minutes

Brewing Temp: 175º

Ingredients

White tea.

Loose Tea: Bulk whole or broken leaves

Tea Bags: Finely cut tea in paper bags

Sachets: Whole-leaf tea in mesh bags

Tea Pods: Single-serve pods for Keurig® brewers

Iced Tea Pouches: Large bags for batches of iced tea

Where it grows

Imboolpittia Estate, in the hills above Kandy

Almost every white tea in the world comes from China. This one does not. It is made at Imboolpittia Estate, in the mountains near Kandy in central Sri Lanka, by teamakers willing to attempt a style the island was never planted for. In Fuding the hills are covered with a cultivar bred to throw fat buds. Here there is no such luxury. Pluckers walk the estate hunting the few bushes that will give a terminal bud worth taking, which is slow, patient work for a very small harvest. The buds are handled so carefully that each one stays whole and turns silver, closer to a slender skewer than to the downy Chinese needle.

RegionImboolpittia Estate, Kandy, Sri Lanka

Map of Imboolpittia Estate, Kandy, Sri Lanka — Imboolpittia Estate, Kandy, Sri Lanka

From our tasting table

We choose the cup

Every single-origin tea we list is chosen the same way, at our tasting table. This one goes a step further: it is plucked and made just for us, a Harney exclusive, because the quantities are too small and the work too particular to exist on the open market. We are not the grower, and we will not pretend to be. What we brought to it was the question of whether Ceylon could make a white tea worth drinking beside a Chinese one, and the willingness to keep asking until the answer came back yes.

At the Harney & Sons tasting table, Millerton

At a glance

TypeWhite

Caffeine Content40–60 mg per cup

FlavorsThere are hints, just hints, of oranges and cloves, but also green grapes and honeycrisp apples, and some floral notes at the finish.

Mike Harney's Ratings

Aroma

Body

Briskness

Almost all white teas come from China. However, there are a few white teas made in other regions. This one is made in the island nation of Sri Lanka. In tea tradition and lore, this island is known as Ceylon. In the mountains and hills, a few teamakers attempt white tea. They send their pluckers out to scour the fields to find the few plants that make a big bud. This is much harder work than in Fuding, China, where the hills are covered with the tea plants that make white tea.

Tasting notes

Aroma: Ceylon Silver Tips has the gentlest citrus-spice suggestion of oranges stuck with cloves and wafts subtle sweetness.
Dry Leaves: There are no leaves, only slender, slightly curved silver buds that are just over an inch long. Since there are fewer downy tricomes than in other white teas, Ceylon Silver Tips looks more like tiny skewers than the pussywillows associated with Chinese Silver Needle.
Liquor: The liquor is the lightest possible, with just hints of pale yellow.
Body: Medium-to-light-bodied, somewhere in between the gossamer Silver Needle and the rounder Bai Mudan.

This season's lot

A very small making

This tea exists in the quantities one estate can find, which is never many. Each making depends on what the pluckers turn up that season, so it arrives in small lots and it does not always arrive on schedule. When it does, we look for the same things: whole silver buds just over an inch long, that hint of orange and clove, the green grape and honeycrisp finish. If a season does not give us that, we would rather wait than fill the tin.