AUTUMN WEE WHITE – 50 Gms

“She said, there is no reason and the truth is plain to see,
But I wandered through my playing cards and would not let her be,
One of sixteen vestal virgins who were leaving for the coast
And although my eyes were open, they might have just as well’ve been closed
And so it was that later as the miller told his tale,
That her face at first just ghostly – turned a whiter shade of pale” – Procol Harum

The Miller in Geoffrey Chaucer’s tome, Canterbury tales is a red bearded drunk, fond of wrestling and his is an immoral tale of seduction and humor, meant to outshine the Knight’s honorable tale of courtly love as the pilgrims- sharing stories to pass the time – make their way to a shrine. The miller is not prepared to be eclipsed by the knight’s tale! Neither is Autumn with its tale of Wee White, prepared to be outshined by the Spring whites. So, autumn abandons the classical plots and prose of medieval literature and delivers its notes by leaning into full-tilt musical psychedelia of the 60’s – taking the needless but pleasurable complexity of medieval plots and poetry and turning it into many things at the same time; turning it all into a whiter shade of pale.

The truth of this little white tea of Autumn is plain to see but it is the act of seeing that is a complicated tale. What may seem ghostly but at first, will turn a whiter shade of pale – as the Autumn tells its tale. The Miller’s tale of Autumn – the underdog of White teas – will never match the knight’s tale of Spring Whites, but then it doesn’t have to – the Wee white delivers its notes in a song! Smelling of Olives, the large and the reasonably small Av2 leaves of Wee White come bearing ghostly grassy notes at first, that turn fiercely and boldly metallic but not before narrating its tale of Mangoes, Litchis and Vanilla that – as the tea cools – gives way to celebratory aromas of sweet-smelling Make-up and Caramels! The tea turns full tilt into metallic psychedelia in subsequent steeps but if you really want to lean into the feeling of ‘a whiter shade of pale’ – a soothing feeling of mystical melancholia – we urge you to wait a few hours before steeping it again. That’s when it becomes many things at once – reasons retreat, meanings resign and doors of perception open – then what first was just ghostly – turns a whiter shade of pale!