I picked this tea up awhile back, ordered along with a nice Tian Xiang Jing Mai sheng. I've been busy lately with vacation outings and getting through some other teas.
Moonlight White is a personal favorite, but then lots of types sort of are. As white teas go I like it as much or more as any other. Some versions can be a bit savory, with sweetness balanced with rich flavors, but my favorites are bright and fruity instead, including flavors like pear or even berry.
As with other whites the texture and overall impression can be pleasantly rich and full. I'll add William's (Farmerleaf's) take in a citation before I post this, but reviewed without seeing those details first. That citation:
For this moonlight white the fresh leaves of our natural [Jing Mai] tea gardens were spread on flat bamboo baskets and left to dry in the shade of our factory for three days...
Moonlight white will oxidize as it ages, just like Pu-erh tea, but quicker. The few months of storage and the pressing process have already given this tea a red character. It delivers incredibly good sweetness, considering it is summer material from relatively young gardens...
You can brew it gongfu style, in a mug, or even boil it in a pot! White tea is very forgivable to the tea brewer, this tea will, never feature much bitterness. If you brew it strong, it will just be thicker. The fragrance is woody and reminds of autumn leaves and a walk in the forest after the rain. The mouthfeel has a light texture and the tea doesn't have a strong effect on the body...
Sounds nice, without too much for spoilers in that.
Review
The first infusion is a bit light but this tea is already really pleasant. I'll do more with a long flavor list and going into texture next round, but it's already sweet, warm, and rich, with a nice spice aspect emerging. It is fruity versus savory or floral, but in a warm dried-fruit range, towards apricot or something such, or maybe dried persimmon. That warmth may relate to autumn leaf but it's more in the sweet dried fruit range than earthy.
I went longer on the second round, over 15 seconds, but this is still subtle. It would take longer infusions to get more intense flavor out of it, in terms of the high-note range, but this tea has a different kind of depth and intensity that's very evident prepared this way. Aging these types of versions usually swaps out that forward intensity for deeper, sweeter tones, and this is along that line already, even though it's not even a year old.
Warmth picks up on this second round; autumn leaf is more evident, and a hint of spice develops. The fruit tone might be traded out a little for that, or at least the brighter aspect range of it, so dried persimmon works much better as a description than dried apricot in this round. Those are a type of plum hybrid, unless I'm mistaken, so if that's unfamiliar it works to say this tastes a little like a sweet version of a prune, or a fig. I'll give the tea more like 30 seconds on this next round to see what range it can cover, but really just drinking it light and subtle and sticking with 15 or so might well be optimum.
The initial promise of lighter range fruit kind of faded, and it's sticking with richer and more subdued tones instead. That's not necessarily bad, since the character is quite pleasant, maybe just a little disappointing given my own personal preference and how it seemed it was going to go. The intense fruit versions of Moonlight whites can be really nice, in a different way.
Related to the idea of this type of tea being savory there is a richness to it, it just stops short of coming across as actually that, something more like soy sauce. I keep sensing there is a mild spice tone but that's so subtle it's hard to place, towards cinnamon, but it doesn't quite stand out enough to be clearly that. Autumn leaf is stronger, but even that is integrated into a mild, subtle, but rich combined mix.
This type of tea gives you options related to how to brew it, or for mixing things up with adding something to it. That might sound like I'm saying that it needs something added to be better, since I wouldn't dream of mixing other ingredients in with most plain loose leaf teas, but I'm only saying that the character lends itself to that, to matching well with other range. Dried orange peel (the outer part) or dried pear peel or fruit might lend it a little more intensity. As to the first part, brewing variations, this would work well made Gongfu style (as I'm preparing it), or Western style, or even "grandpa style," added to a tea bottle and drank with the leaves continuing to brew in it, with water re-added until it looses flavor. It would even work to cold brew this, or to simmer it, I'm just not into such things.
More of the same on the next infusion; it's warm, rich, and subtle. I think the sweet and complex smell of the dry tea led me to expect it to be more intense. From tasting this I'd expect it to be a shou mei, instead of a Moonlight White. The prepared leaves aren't silver with a dark bottom, so it must not be made of the cultivar that turns out that way, which would account for the aspect range varying. Shou mei really might be a leaf size / grading term, versus a style, or given how tea terms and types go it could be used as both.
There is a common misconception that any tea leaf can be made into any tea type, which is technically true but only in a limited sense. Different initial inputs (leaf types, and compounds present in leaves) will only support making good versions of some types of teas. You can't really make oolong out of Assamica, for example, or at least the experiments in attempting that I've tasted didn't work.
Per one conventional understanding a general range of white teas age very well, picking up depth and complexity over 7 years (a time frame lifted from one of those old Chinese sayings: "one year a white tea, 3 years a medicine, 7 years a treasure"). It's hard to link that to this tasting result, or pass on my own take on conventional aging patterns for white teas, since I've been through a bit with that but don't have it even close to sorted out yet. I tasted four white teas together of somewhat related types across different ages (here), but really individual version character differences alone made it impossible to draw any other conclusions. It was an interesting experience, beyond relating to a mild case of caffeine overdose.
It just keeps brewing; a half dozen rounds in it's still not transitioning. This would make a decent breakfast tea, a relatively neutral background experience to go along with eating pastry and whatever else.
Lots of people claim they need a strong or robust black tea to really get them going, in part probably related to the flavor experience expectation carried over from coffee, and probably also an expectation that tanins somehow relate to caffeine content. Since caffeine levels vary by age of leaf material (bud are higher in level than older leaves) most white teas actually contain more, but this one wouldn't necessarily, as a larger-leaf derived summer tea version. The limited flavor intensity probably relates to summer harvesting as well, and I don't know how often Moonlight versions tend to ever be made in the Spring.
Comparison tasting second session
That initial tasting didn't really seem conclusive; it's odd doing a round of tasting and notes and then feeling like you might not have really captured what a tea is about. So I comparison tasted it with a relatively similar white tea cake from Moychay, one that seemed to be in between white tea styles as well.
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Farmerleaf left (but they look a bit similar) |
This won't be a round-by-round detailed review, just a short general impression. This Farmerleaf tea impression didn't change. It still seemed positive, sweet and light in character, and pleasant, with a balancing mild earthiness, but lacking complexity and depth. It still didn't necessarily seem like a standard Moonlight white, but being light and sweet with warmer range for balance is a good start.
The Moychay compressed 2018 Moonlight version was richer, with deeper flavors, slightly more complexity, and a bit of a savory edge along with more dried fruit range. Looking back I had reviewed that tea in an article posted on the Moychay site, not here in this blog.
This lacks specifics but for both I'd probably be retracing the usual ground of how in a lot of cases flavor aspects could be interpreted in different ways. This Moychay tea could've been more intense in terms of pronounced flavor aspects but the Farmerleaf version was even more subtle.
I liked both. It might seem like I mean something else, when I'm saying that tea seems kind of narrow in character range, not so complex, and lacking some degree of depth. Some teas are simple, and that can work, if what they express is positive. White teas in general took some getting used to, and I still find some buds-only versions (silver needle or silver tips) just a little too subtle and vague to really like as much as the rest. Adding any warmer tones and more sweetness works better for me, even if a version doesn't make it as far as being complex or distinctive.
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Farmerleaf left (but they look similar) |
In a sense the Farmerleaf matches part of the Moonlight range better for being very light and sweet, since those are often like that, just in those cases often more fruity as well. But then some versions are deeper in tone, more like dried fruit, with a savory edge, like the Moychay example.
It's odd that I just read the early notes saying that I like the lighter and sweeter style better, and I may as be clear about what I've only implied up until now, I liked the Moychay version slightly more in this case. It had more depth, and dried-fruit range can be really nice. When I said that I tend to like the brighter, lighter, fruitier styles of Moonlight White better (in the intro here) that was a reference to some teas actually tasting like berry (which can be amazing), with other savory versions sometimes tasting like sun-dried tomato.
Looking back I can cite examples spanning this range, that might help clarify what I mean. I really liked this Thai version of Moonlight White, because that bright fruit was present, extending towards berry range (even if it was a little subtle in overall character, and tastes really settled at mandarin orange, plum, and teaberry, with some degree of savory range too). Oddly that was complex in flavor range but even more subtle than these, for lacking that deeper mild earthiness, the autumn forest part; so things can go.
A Laos version of Moonlight White from Kinnari tea (reviewed here) might be more what I'm talking about related to those sometimes being more savory and not as sweet and fruity. That's crazy that I comparison tasted that Laos MLW along with two others, buds-only white teas from Laos and Nepal at that. It kind of makes no sense, and is borderline disrespectful to that Moonlight version to not give it its own post. Then again mentioning a half dozen other versions for comparison in this review post is definitely atypical.
Further into the range of reviewing taboos I'm curious about comparing value for the two versions, since they seemed so similar, and since I spent money on the Farmerleaf version. Moychay contributed the other for review, to be clear; they've been great about helping me experience a broader range of teas to review.
The Moychay version lists for $10 for 100 grams; pretty good for as nice as that tea is. Farmerleaf's lists for $25 for a 200 gram version; a little more, but really in the same range. With both teas that inexpensive it would seem wrong to blame either for offering questionable value; if anything both seem a little low in price. Other vendors might charge considerably more and use more superlatives in their descriptions, and then could still end up selling tea that's not quite as good.
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that (then) 5 year old shou mei version |
It would be interesting comparing one or both of these to a standard Fuding shou mei, like the one reviewed here, but two rounds of tasting and all this cross-reference is already a bit much. I could check those against that same version of that tea but it might have changed since that review time-frame. Or maybe not; it was a 2012 produced version I reviewed in 2017, so maybe two more years of storage didn't change much. It's cool that version just made it to that "7 years a treasure" threshold; I should check on that.
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lychee season; time to switch over to more of a fruit diet |
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