Comparing Indonesian and Thai Silver Needle White Teas

Finally on to tasting one of the more interesting teas I picked up in Indonesia, a silver needle white tea from Wonosari plantation, in Eastern Java.  Two other posts go into some more background on there and those teas, but the short version is that it's a government associated, Dutch influenced tea plantation.  At least true per what little I've read or heard; without their own reference material, or a website, or more direct communication from them that's not confirmed.

The other tea is a Thailand originated Lana Silver Needle tea from Monsoon teas, a tea shop in Chiang Mai, Thailand, with this sample provided by them.  Per usual the combined tasting format was to help identify subtle character differences better, which stand out better in comparison.

Monsoon Thai silver needle left, Wonosari Indonesian right

Review

The teas look quite different.  The Indonesian silver needle looks like I would expect, silver-white individual buds, while the Thai Lana silver needle tea is a light greenish color.  I've read critiques of white teas described as not being true white teas based on using different processing, with different outcomes, but that is not familiar enough for me to address it here, and I didn't research it further for this post.

The Wonosari Indonesian tea had an unusual smoke scent, with a pleasant rich sweetness beyond that.  The Thai tea smelled sweet as well, but with a vegetal scent beyond that, in between the light, subtle-earth scent of white tea and a profile more common to green tea.

Wonosari tea; nice and silver

The first taste of the Indonesian tea was essentially just smoke.  Actually the first few infusions were like that, overwhelmed by it.  After two or three I was able to try and taste past it, and the tea seemed to have a full, rich feel to it, and good sweetness, with the typical subtle earthy / light floral flavors of a white tea, towards chrysanthemom or chamomile, but less explicitly floral.


The smoke kind of worked, after the first infusions, when it had diminished, it just seemed a really odd idea to be drinking a smoked white tea.  As many infusions passed it faded out and more rich, sweet flavors came to the fore; a really nice white tea.  One of the distinctions between good white teas and better ones has seemed to be the feel of the tea, and this one is full and smooth.

packaging; a filler picture

So the comparison idea didn't work out so well, given that one aspect, smoke, colored the effect of that tea so much.


The Thai silver needle tea was nice, but different than I expected.  As with the scent some flavor elements resembled green tea.  The vegetal character didn't resemble grass, or spinach or peppers, none of that typical range, but it was close to green hay.  If that's not familiar, it is a pleasant, relatively neutral, soft vegetal element.  If you happen to walk through a field of growing hay give it a smell; and try pulling out the top green flower top from the bottom of the stalk, and taste the soft, rich part growing inside; quite tasty.


The tea itself had none of the astringency common to green tea, not even a start in the feel of the body.  It was even a bit thin, really, not a problem for me since I don't value white teas for the feel as much as that seems more crucial to some other types, presented differently in those.  It wouldn't have stood out so much but the Indonesian tea seemed much fuller in body in comparison, and a bit sweeter.

Monsoon left, Wonosari right

Both teas brewed lots of infusions, somewhat consistently, beyond the smoke element dropping out for the Wonosari tea.  The feel of the teas changed a good bit as I increased brewing times to compensate 8 or 9 infusions in, along with the effect and presentation of the flavor profile.  The Thai tea picked up a bit of astringency comparable to that in a black tea, just a much lighter version.  The Wonosari tea really didn't; it stayed quite smooth and went to a fuller feel rather than changing in that way.  All this reminds me of an interesting aside, which I'll add after this part.


As for final conclusions, it seemed without that smoke the Wonosari tea may well have been a really nice example of a silver needle tea.  It still worked well for me, and even the smoke was interesting, especially experiencing it dropping out.  It combined with the other elements in different ways as it faded, while the other aspects didn't change as much.  I could imagine other people taking that differently, more negatively.  It's odd to smoke a white tea, and it would seem likely that wasn't intentional.  Or maybe it was.

The Thai tea was nice.  Again a tea purist might have been put off by the deviation from normal silver needle character, in terms of flavor profile, and the thinner feel of the tea, but to me it was still quite nice, maybe even interesting for being different.

Aside about varying brewing time and tea strength:

In the past I've noted how white tea brewing suggestions tend to fall into two completely different sets (more on general brewing guidelines in this post), with one standard preparation method calling for relatively long brewing times (based on Western style brewing), of 4 to 5 minutes.  The other approach prepares the tea very lightly, more conventional for a gongfu approach, although really someone could brew tea Western-style very lightly and gongfu-style as strong tea, using longer times.

It's odd how the different proportion of tea to water comes into play, so that a white tea brewed as a strong version might infuse for 4 to 5 minutes for Western-style brewing, and still under a minute for gongfu style.  For a lighter version infusing Western-style for 2 minutes might do, and gongfu style only 20 seconds, or one could drink a very wispy version flash-infused, in contact with the water only as long as it takes to pour it in and then back out.

same teas, brewed stronger

It all depends on preference, doesn't it?  That's true, but it can be unsatisfying just leaving it at that.  I recently read a great related comment on a tea group thread that added lots of detail, what the difference in effect would be (not just that the tea would be lighter and stronger, I mean).  The discussion was in the The Great World Tea Group, kind of newer and smaller as Facebook tea groups go, but I guess typical of those.  To me they are either somewhat exclusively about pu'er or not; this one not (or some about Darjeeling only, to be fair).



Kirk O'Neil, the group owner, raised this question:


I don't know how people can drink any tea that's too light; it confuses me.  Sometimes I see gongfu brewed tea brewed lightly.  I like strong brewed teas except for most strong brewed young shou (ripe) puerh.  Is weak brewed tea being not as enjoyable as strong brewed tea a bad thing?  Is it a good thing I enjoy strong brewed tea?


To be honest I'd love to see more discussion of tea in a tea group anywhere, so I'm impressed that Kirk would share his own preference to initiate a discussion.  It's all too easy for the comments to drift towards "you are wrong," even in cases clearly related to preference, like this one.  I help moderate a different FB tea group, and I post different random things there, but even I don't usually address questions like that outside this blog content.

Christmas!  but nothing to do with tea

One response was more interesting and insightful than the others, by Thomas Smith, someone I have talked about tea a bit with online, and he's got a fairly developed take on things:


It is a matter of preference per focus. Lighter intensity and body allows a much wider range of flavor elements to be perceived, though they may be too light to be appreciable to some. Steeping longer will truncate flavor range to just a handful of easily identified characteristics, reduce number of total infusions that may be yielded, reduce spread of flavor deviations between infusions, hamper expression of sweetness and aromas, and promote potential astringency. The payoff is heavier impact of the relatively smaller set of flavors, increased viscosity, and greater consistency or reliability of cup character. 

Those who enjoy Assam, Yunnan, and Fujian red teas and many quick adopters of Shú Pǔ'ěr and similar accelerated-fermentation dark teas may gravitate to longer steep times both out of familiarity and from these teas not really offering much on the light approach compared to the texture payoff in protracted infusions.


Next level deeper analysis, right?  Does it match your experience?  I've noted in this blog that lighter tea brewing can actually allow for separating flavor elements better, so the main point I completely agree with.  For a white tea this variation in infusion time and strength seems even more pronounced, emphasizing completely different elements, not just shifting how they come across.

Wonosari plantation; outside Malang, East Java

Other factors also relate, including a learning curve for preference (or preference curve, if one would rather), related to appreciating different aspects of a tea.  Somehow it seems like preferring stronger tea first and gravitating towards lighter is natural, but of course it's not that simple either.

There is an underlying assumption that one would want to optimize brewing to suit their own preferences, but I don't necessarily end up there.  I experiment with brewing a lot just to see what it changes, sometimes even infusion to infusion.  That contradicts the appreciation of the "flavor deviations between infusions," as Thomas put it, at the core of what many tea drinkers regard as an essential part of the experience.


This would be a good place for a summary wrap-up, maybe something like "to each their own."  As I see it the beauty of the experience of tea is that it does keep going, new experiences, changing understanding, varying preferences, with change and diversity a big part of the appeal.  Of course, to each their own; others might figure out what they like and tend to stick with that.

Merry Christmas! And about a coconut flavored tea, while I'm at it

elves!  ok, just ordinary small humans

Merry Christmas!  I never write holiday theme blog posts, and I never drink flavored teas (except for a little jasmine, osmanthus, or Earl Grey, and then there's masala chai, but you know what I mean).  Monsoon teas, a tea shop in Chiang Mai, Thailand, sent me a sample of a coconut green tea so it seemed a good time to break form.  I wrote about another plain green tea version of theirs here, and mentioned they seem to specialize in unusual Thai teas, likely more closely related to native plant types, more traditional locally sourced tea, etc.


First, about Christmas in Bangkok.  I worked, so that part is different.  It was less of a loss because my son is at school too, so we did presents opening early and will get back to what it's supposed to be about later, or just skip some of that.  It doesn't seem like Christmas when it's 80+ degrees out (nearly 30; I've switched this to F given the context), and it can be hard to keep up the same level of traditional celebration here.


The part about being in a Buddhist country changes things too.  They put trees up, and decorate the malls, but otherwise they don't know what to make of Christmas.  I once went to a work New Year's Eve party on Christmas day and no one acknowledged it was that--kind of strange.


How does this relate to tea?  Maybe it never will completely tie back in, but I've meant to say something about the trade-offs of living in a different country at some point, outside the US.  One positive aspect is that I'm in a tea producing country, and a half dozen others are a bus or train ride away, although we usually fly places.  We travel a lot, and it's relatively inexpensive, more so than going to the next state over back in the states.

the important part covered, the good spirit

The list of problems and adjustments related to living in a foreign country is so long it would sound like whining if I even started in.  Giving up the normal celebration of every single holiday, and not offering that same form of my own past experience to my kids, is just the start.  So trade-offs, along with other positive aspects; but then, one would expect that.  Of course there's much more I could say but I'll switch this back over to tea-blog mode instead.

About the earlier Monsoon teas I tried, it had occurred to me that they would work well for blending related to how the earthiness came across, even though they were much better than the average Thai teas I've tried here.  Part of considering that was a review of a traditional Thai iced tea post, where it came to light that such teas were originally based on somewhat native Assamica type plants.  Modern versions are artificially flavored, powdered tea, a bit nasty, but the original based on real tea, crushed tamarind seeds, and orange blossoms sounded interesting, and the version I actually tried was ok (not really sure what was in that though).

Tea review

The coconut flavored tea was the first flavored tea I've drank this year, aside from the other types I mentioned (jasmine, etc.).  It is a loose tea, nothing like tea bags, so I was wondering if it could really work.  The tea tasted almost exactly like a Mounds bar, just without cocoa / chocolate, which did work for me.  The flavors were very clean and natural, with a little softer green tea flavor, but as much toasted coconut taste as that.  One would have to at least consider pairing the tea with chocolate, then it would be like actually eating the Mounds bar, but with half the experience in a hot beverage form.

I talked to Kenneth, the shop owner, about the tea, curious about what the flavor was.  He didn't get into processing details but it is from an essential oil made from toasted coconut, something they make or have made for them (or so it seemed).  I was wondering how it could taste as real as it does, without some strange aftertaste or aspect, and that's it; it is real, just not as if there is actually shaved coconut in with the leaves.  Getting the balance right would be the trick to it, but the coconut taste level was about where it should be, and somehow didn't vary much across infusions, so all good there.

It's easy to stop there and not drift into how a tea matches or doesn't match my personal preference.  One might even say it's a tea blogger convention to do that when it does overlap well, but not when it doesn't, to keep things positive.  I won't be switching over to flavored teas anytime soon but this is easily the best flavored tea I've ever tried.  I suppose that's not saying much, since setting aside those few exceptions the others were tea bags, and I've definitely not drank even one such tea this year, and few enough across my lifetime.  It's not negative aspects of this tea that would keep me from drinking more of it, and others like it, but the vast expanse of other new teas to try, each with different character based just on plain loose tea.

an Ibis hotel in Malang, Java, Indonesia (some Christmas trappings there too)

I had a nice conversation with Kenneth about other aspects of the local industry, about tea production and drinking, sustainability.  I'd think most people that are more into tea would have given all this some thought, and it's nice to hear about real steps being taken on the other side, a producer picking teas to sell based on that.  On the other side of that, it's sort of a leap of faith to believe anything any vendor says about it.


I trust what he was saying, but it really helps that it won't matter so much if it wasn't accurate.  If that tea came from a recently strip-cut rain forest farm--which it didn't--it would be sad, but I'd never learn of that truth.  If that taste was from some chemical mix--which it isn't--it wouldn't be as healthy, and it would be unlikely for it to taste so natural, but my health wouldn't suffer, probably even if I drank a few hundred grams of it a year.  A bit cynical?  I suppose.


Even for the most transparent vendors, people that offer lots more details--and business names do come to mind--it's hard to really know.  Some vendors one step up the sourcing chain could dig lots deeper into growing conditions than a consumer looking at a web page, and they might feel convinced, justifiably, but the whole landscape would need to shift before it would seem easier to really separate at the lower level, for the person buying the tea.  So what do we do?  Some enthusiasts and vendors would say to vote with your purchasing dollars (or baht, or rupiah), but some of the time the grounds for doing that could just be marketing spin, so it's right back to the issue of separating fact from fiction.  I'll keep it in mind, and write more about it as there is more to say.

Wonosari plantation Indonesian green tea

An interesting tea from the Wonosari tea plantation; a nice one to follow-up the initial travel-blog themed post about visiting Indonesia recently.   The appearance is unusual,  a dull light green, presented as folded bundles of tea.  Somehow the color seemed a little flat, if that makes sense.


The initial taste was vegetal, towards grassy, but more in the range of spinach and green peppers.  I was reminded of a recent experience with a Thai green tea thinking that someone else more into green teas might really like the tea.


There was a little mustiness to the flavor as well.  That also reminded me of that Thai tea. I had initially thought it related to freshness but per the owner of Monsoon teas it was more an attribute of the plant type,  a local "wild" Assamica strain.  And of course it could also relate to terroir, and processing could come into play.


About freshness, the "use-by" date on the package gave the tea another two years, really too long for a green tea even if it had been made in the past month, but without knowing how long they thought it could last I wouldn't know that origin date (without asking about all that directly--a bit of gap there on my part).  Since they were cutting tea then (we saw someone doing it), and since Northern Hemisphere seasons don't mean much on the equator (8 degrees South of it, if memory serves), it's hard to say what they were doing for harvest seasons.

about freshness, not sure how long shelf-life is

The next infusion was a lot cleaner in flavor.  I'm out of the habit of doing rinses but it occurred to me that it might work to experiment with that for this tea; essentially throw out the first short infusion to get better results in general.  I have a cold so the aspects were coming through across a compromised palate but I'll give description a go.  I thought to try it a second time, and did the next day, buy my sense of taste seemed completely gone at that point, so I think my cold is getting worse.  If I thought it would change things I'd have held off on posting this but I'm sure a few more details would emerge, but doubt the general impression or review would.


The vegetal aspects toned down a good bit after the first infusion.  More mineral elements started coming to the fore.  I had wondered how volcanic soil would affect this tea (there were volcanoes everywhere;  clearly we were standing on an older one), and it seemed likely that was part of background for that aspect.  It wasn't the same rock effect found in Wuyi Yancha,  a little closer to Vietnamese teas, but not that either, richer and earthier and less dry, not so much like shale or granite.  I'd like to think it was like a black sand beach smell,  but it's been awhile since I've been to one, or to that active volcano in Hawaii where brand-new rock is all around.


Other nice aspects joined in, a fruitiness.  It was hard to separate particular fruit, maybe towards blueberry,  or a light sweet tropical counterpart.  I have tried the herb that Fruit Loops cereal tastes so much like that it almost seems to be based on it, pandan; maybe like that.  And this seems a good place for a tangent.


To begin with, Fruit Loops isn't based on pandan, it's just a coincidence that the mix of artificial and natural flavors end up sort of close to there (and it turns out that the different colored loops all taste the same--crazy; I could swear Toucan Sam said otherwise).  Pandan is an herb described as one used in the same way vanilla is in some references (like Wikipedia; that's digging deep into the research).  Don't take my word for it that pandan tastes like Fruit Loops, though (just better); here is a Michelin-starred restaurant dish review that makes the same comparison:


A delicate, paper-thin slice of steamed sponge cake is soaked in pandan syrup and topped with pandan ice cream, milk gelato, and candied pistachios. The long green leaves of the Southeast Asian pandan plant lend an aromatic, fruity flavor that is startlingly reminiscent of Fruit Loops (of all things), making the addition of the milk gelato even better—like cereal milk.

tea plantation workers; friendly as everyone in general was

Back to it then; astringency in that tea was limited.  All in all it was a nice tea, good complexity,  interesting range of developing flavors from one single tea.  It might have been lots better when fresh, or maybe that was relatively fresh.  Although I literally bought the tea from the people that made it (and who did plantation tours) we didn't talk much about the tea, at all.

Mt. Bromo!  so cool it's hard to really take it in

I'd stayed awake almost the whole night before to climb a local, very active volcano (ok, really the next one over; we went up Mt. Penanjakan to see Mt. Bromo), so it was hard enough to focus in and not leave tea behind.  They also sold a good range of tea bag tea, which I did leave behind.


It's a good start for Indonesian teas but I wasn't under the impression I found the best of what they had to offer.  Subsequent discussion indicates there are probably more and likely enough better plantations in the West and center of Java island, and also on other islands (Sumatra in particular, as I recall, but I'll get back with a bit more research in another post).  I think by messing around a little with that tea I tried you could get a little more out of it, find the complexity it had to offer, and I will do just that, later, without a cold.  I also bought black tea and a white tea from them, and green and white from another shop, and some commercial teas, so I'll get back about more of those along with more to say about Indonesian tea in general.

More on Indonesia:

kind of normal looking residential areas

That was already the natural stopping point for that post; I gave a rough idea what the tea was like, and admitted to not knowing that much about it given that I was right there at the source.  There are some other teas to review, so I'll have ample space for going on about whatever, with more plantation research the one part I've promised, but I don't feel like I've really communicated much of what Indonesia was really like.  Somehow it deserves that, since it was different than I expected, nicer in a lot of ways.

It didn't really feel as much like a developing nation to me as most of the rest of South East Asia.  Some of that might be that the rough edges are just familiar now (I've been here for 8 years), so I'm just more comfortable with seeing shacks next to modern hotels or malls, or however that goes.  But I don't think that was it.

2nd class train, a great option to have

It was less Western too, so malls and convenience stores weren't quite as predominant as in Thailand, but at the same time the rough edges weren't quite as rough.  According to whatever development indexes the UN and such use it probably wasn't past the middle of the curve but they'd went their own way, and it wasn't a country rushing from a traditional agricultural society to Western infrastructure and shopping, with tourism and manufacturing as a base.  Ok, maybe tourism was the foundation in Bali, but not so much in Java.

As an example, we took both an ordinary class and a more premium class train on Java, both of which were nearly free compared to anything I've researched from Amtrak (which I never took; always too much cheaper and faster to fly).  Any train travel except high-speed options might seem a bit second-rate, to some, but I love trains, all types of them.  In Thailand and Vietnam they go the next step and offer sleeper cars, like a tiny budget hotel room but with a WW II era miliatry ship feel to it, but it was still great to have multiple, inexpensive options like those in Indonesia.


I'd guess it had to do with a long history of being a Dutch colony, the kind of thing Thailand is proud to not have in their own background.  Places like Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam don't really play up that background, at least in most places, although it's there in old architecture in some, related to the French influence.  To me the culture was also their own; without much concern about where they stand or how their development was going, if anything just a bit inquisitive related to still being somewhat isolated (again, not Bali, but that's essentially a resort island).  My wife didn't care for hearing the Islamic temples' call to prayer during normal sleeping hours but to me it was great how religion and culture weren't really an issue.  Until we tried to buy beer; odd you'd just expect that to be available everywhere, outside a place like Saudi Arabia, but not so much there.


The people were great too, but that starts a drift into me just being attached to the trip and those experiences.  People are ok everywhere, according my own limited experience, but Indonesia was really worth a look.