Hi. I'm a relative new comer to teas,but my dad was raving to me last night about them. A friend has given him a book about tea, and he was getting very over excited about how much you can pay for some of these amazing teas. He was particularly excited about white tea. I thought I could get him a super-fine tea for Christmas, the kind of tea you could never justifiably buy for yourself because it's too expensive. What are some of the finer, more expensive teas around? Are they white teas? If you could have one tea that was the Rolls Royce of tea, white, green or otherwise, what would it be? Thanks.
-- 'I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think.' Or, 'I think where I cannot say that I am.' Jacques Lacan
No wonder you are a new comer. Rolls Royce of tea? what a joke.
White tea- well, my advice is(because price is everything to you not the taste) you buy white tea or a Rolls Royce for your dad. The best thing you can do is- buy a ticket to China for your dad, who can visit China and find the finests white tea from there. I think the total cost (Ticket+hotel+food+white tea) will make the tea cost so high that some us could never justifiably buy for ourselves because it will be too expensive. You can also try this web address-
I don't think the tea you're looking for exists. You'll have no trouble hunting down some very expensive teas if you look, but I think you'll find that teas are much like wines in this regard: there's a big jump in quality from the cheapest to the midrange, then a jump in subtlety and complexity between the midrange and the high range. The difference between High and Very High priced teas is generally detectable only to connoisseurs.
In short, there's no one tea, or even one smallish set of teas, that we'd all be drinking if we had unlimited funds. Tastes really do vary, and the tea market is a commodity market like any other -- the price depends on much more than just the perceived quality of the tea.
Also, one issue that you may encounter if your father isn't a very experienced tea drinker is that more expensive teas tend to be fussier
-- you really have to get the brew parameters (water temperature, steep time, leaf amount) just right to bring out the nuances that (might) justify their price. It takes quite a bit of practice to be able to get this stuff right on a regular basis. Teas that are hard to brew correctly don't make good gifts for new enthusiasts.
Here's some practical information, though: In pursuit of tea
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offers a white tea sampler that might be along the lines of what you're looking for. Also, the imperial tea court
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offers a number of "imperial grade" teas that are quite expensive, but, by many accounts, worth it. (I've found their teas to be hit-and-miss, but the hits are excellent. I've never been willing to shell out the price of an imperial-grade, though.)
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