Silver Needle White Tea (Yin Zhen)
Silver Needle (Yin Zhen in Chinese) and Silver Tip white teas are for most practical purposes identical products, and the names are often used interchangably. Silver Needle is grown in China, and is generally considered the finest and most exclusive variety of Chinese white tea. The same sort of white tea, processed in essentially he same way, is often known as Silver Tip when it is grown in India or Sri Lanka.
Untouched by hands
Since they are basically the same product, it is practically impossible to tell the difference between Silver Needle and Silver Tip. Both are exclusively very young tea leaf buds, tightly rolled up as they were when they were harvested, and covered in the fine, white down from which white tea gets its name.Regardless of where it's grown, Silver Needle white tea is handpicked early in the springtime, before the buds have rolled out to become leaves. Picking white tea is commonly a job for women wearing gloves. The buds are not actually touched by human hands before the Silver Needle white tea ends up in the teapot of the happy tea aficionado.
Special tea bushes
The tea bushes that are designated for growing Silver Needle white tea usually get the best placement on the plantation, so that they receive precisely the most beneficial amount of sunshine and shade, and the right moisture and temperature conditions.Naturally, only a few bushes are designated for white tea, and only a small percentage of the leaves produced finally end up as Silver Needle. Less perfect buds are made into lower quality teas.
The exclusivity of white tea is illustrated by the fact that some plantations only produce a maximum of five kgs of Silver Needle white tea a week, but 20 tons of black tea.
Silver Needle prices
What you can expect to pay for Silver Needle white tea varies slightly from one year to the next, and also with how much you buy at a time. At the larger online vendors the price tag should be about $6 to $8 an ounce (about 28 grams). This means that the final price for a good quality Silver Needle white tea is around $100 per pound ($215/kg).It is no problem acquiring an even more expensive white tea, be it named Silver Needle or Silver Tip. Prices sometimes quoted reach over $1000 for one kg of the finest Silver Needle. If you pay that much, though, you hopefully are a real expert and really know your Silver Needle white tea. The first-class Silver Needle
Summary: Silver Needle is the most exclusive and expensive variety of white tea. It is grown on special bushes and hand-picked at specific times. Prices for Silver Needle white tea hover around $7 per ounce.