In 2007, I was studying Materials Engineering in Sheffield. During the Easter Holiday, I went to London to explore the city.
That time, at Harrods, I first heard the term "white tea".
The staff member was introducing a white tea from Darjeeling, India.
Back then, I didn’t really understand tea and just thought it was something very novel.
But looking back now, it’s actually quite interesting. Hearing about white tea there in 2007 means I was among the relatively early group of people exposed to it.
At that time, the European market was just beginning to present white tea as a premium tea. Many department store staff would tell a story like:
From the Himalayas, hand-picked, rare and delicate.
However, there is a detail that people within the tea world would know.
Many of those so-called "Darjeeling white teas" were actually relatively new products and not ancient traditional teas.
The True Traditional White Tea
The real historical origin of white tea is actually in Fujian, China:
- Baihao Yinzhen (Silver Needle)
- Baimudan (White Peony)
In Darjeeling, large-scale attempts to produce white tea only began around the early 2000s.
The reason was practical: the market needed new stories.
At that time, the European market was becoming interested in:
- Health-oriented teas
- Lightly oxidized teas
- Antioxidant benefits
As a result, many tea estates started introducing new product types:
- Darjeeling White Tea
- Silver Tips
- Moonlight White
This was essentially a new specialty tea strategy.
A Turning Point in the Global Tea Market
Looking back, my experience happened at a real turning point.
Between 2005–2010, the global specialty tea market started to take shape.
Several important developments occurred during this period:
- Darjeeling began developing specialty teas
- Taiwanese high-mountain teas started to attract European attention
- White tea was marketed as a health tea
- The single-origin concept became popular
Looking back, it’s actually quite fascinating.
At that time, I was standing right in the middle of a changing tea industry, without realizing it.
Many people in the tea world now look back at that period and feel:
It was an era when the market began to "reinvent tea."
An Interesting Class
By the way, my class at that time was quite interesting.
I had two classmates from Iran and one from India, making for a rather international group.
Looking back, it reflects the typical British university experience: people from all over the world coming together briefly in one place.