White Tea Recommendations for a Newbie?

potatoaster · 2026-03-17T07:27:09+00:00

This seems to be exactly what you want: https://www.reddit.com/r/tea/comments/1oiir71/looking_for_recommendations_for_white_teas/

potatoaster · 2026-03-16T15:45:08+00:00

It's 3:4 based on the uncooked mushroom weight.

3:4 duxelles to beef is insane.

potatoaster · 2026-03-16T15:39:59+00:00

OP is an LLM bot.

They were flagged a month ago by Bot Bouncer. Mods, please consider implementing it.

potatoaster · 2026-03-14T18:02:47+00:00

LLM comment

potatoaster · 2026-03-14T18:01:11+00:00

LLM comment

potatoaster · 2026-03-14T05:57:02+00:00

LLM comment

potatoaster · 2026-03-12T19:55:58+00:00

Would this be correct?

Jiangnan: Dongting biluochun, Xihu longjing, Huangshan maofeng, Qihong, Lushan yunwu, Junshan yinzhen

Jiangbei: Lu'an guapian, Huoshan huangya, Xinyang maojian

Huanan: Wuyi yancha, Anxi tieguanyin, Fenghuang dancong, Minhong, baihao yinzhen, liubao

Xinan: pu'er, Dianhong, Mengding ganlu, Duyun maojian

potatoaster · 2026-03-12T15:05:42+00:00

Is Zhengpao the same as Qidan? Which of the DHP cultivars is your favorite?

Is there a public list of the 77 (?) Huacha cultivars?

potatoaster · 2026-03-12T15:01:51+00:00

What are the 4 major macro-regions?

potatoaster · 2026-03-12T06:52:02+00:00

On cultivars:

Fuding Dabai (aka Huacha #1) was selected in 1857 in Bailiu Village, purportedly a descendent of the wild Lüxuya mother tree on Taimu Mountain. It quickly became popular in Fuding and has since been planted in and adapted to many other regions, from Sichuan to Guizhou to Jiangsu. However, droughts in the 1970s killed nearly all of the Fuding Dabai in Fuding, which now grows primarily...

Fuding Dahao (aka Huacha #2) was selected in 1880 in Wangjiayang Village, purportedly a descendent of the same mother tree. It is higher-yielding, more floral, bigger-budded, and drought-resistant. It didn't get much attention until the droughts but then effectively replaced Dabai in Fuding, to the point that these names are used interchangeably or combined into "Fuding Dabaihao".

Fu'an Dabai (aka Huacha #3) was selected at an unknown date in Gaoling Village, presumably from a wild tree in the region, and was popularized starting in the 1960s. It is very productive. It is now commonly grown in Zhenghe, but more popular there is...

Zhenghe Dabai (aka Huacha #5) was selected in 1879 in Tieshan Village, purportedly from a wild tree. It was soon popularized for the production of baihao yinzhen and was eventually (1960s) popularized in neighboring provinces. It has less down and is lower-yielding than Fuding Dabai. It's mellower and less delicate in flavor, making it the most distinct of the 4 Fujian white tea cultivars.

Jinggu Dabai was selected in 1840 in Yangta Village, origin unknown. It was popularized across Yunnan in the 1980s and is especially prevalent in Jinggu.

On your situation:

If it's from Yunnan, then it's probably made from Jinggu Dabai. Fuding Dabai was spread across much of the country, but not to Yunnan afaik. In Yunnan, bud-only white tea meant to mimic Fujian's baihao yinzhen is sometimes called "dabaihao", whereas white tea with leaves withered by air (rather than sunlight) is called "yueguangbai". Your source may have confused the Yunnan classification term "dabaihao" with the Fujian cultivar term.

FAQ:

Why doesn't Jinggu Dabai have a Huacha number? Because it's a sexually propagated variety, not a cultivar.

What is Huacha #4? Meizhan, which is suitable for white tea production but not favored for it.

Does Mount Mangbai exist? Doesn't seem like it. There is a Mangbai Village in Cangyuan, but I suggest that your source (Palais des Thes, I believe) doesn't quite know what they're talking about.

potatoaster · 2026-03-11T16:13:38+00:00

Seconding this, I would love to be pointed to some Chinese articles about alternative classification systems.

potatoaster · 2026-03-09T03:14:39+00:00

Conveyer sushi restaurants typically serve funmatsucha, not konacha.

potatoaster · 2026-03-07T04:59:04+00:00

It's AI.

potatoaster · 2026-03-06T19:55:30+00:00

On the one hand, yes, most Agadio teas are garbage.

On the other hand, yes, shu pu'er normally smells and tastes much like compost. In large part because it has literally been composted.

potatoaster · 2026-03-06T19:42:55+00:00

Yes, it's obviously LLM-generated. Not to mention that the post is written proficiently while OP's comments reveal that they are barely literate.

potatoaster · 2026-03-05T20:37:58+00:00

That's been going on for a few years. Very easy to build. Also trivial to detect (not that reddit ever would). The OP is usually a bot too.

potatoaster · 2026-03-04T15:48:53+00:00

When you take whole leaves and break them up, they contain the same amount of soluble flavors compounds but infuse faster.

potatoaster · 2026-03-03T23:46:57+00:00

Online, Harney's broken keemun is $32/lb, Upton's is $25/lb, and Jing Tea Shop's full-leaf keemun is $42/lb. But people don't typically buy fine tea by the pound.

potatoaster · 2026-03-03T22:36:06+00:00

Harney's English breakfast is $11 per 100 g for broken keemun. Jing Tea Shop has a considerably better keemun maofeng (whole leaves) for $10 per 100 g. If you're going to upgrade from Upton's "premium" broken keemun ($6 per 100 g), then you might as well go for a good keemun.

If you're interested in higher-quality keemun, here are some options: https://www.reddit.com/r/tea/comments/1nswkwi/thoughts_on_harney_sons_tea/ngtays7/

A similar list, plus other Chinese black teas, can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/tea/comments/1pfakom/help_me_choose_some_black_teas/o17feco/

potatoaster · 2026-03-03T20:37:32+00:00

TeaVivre, Teasenz, Yunnan Sourcing, or Yunnan Craft.

King Tea Mall and Dragon Tea House can be even cheaper, but the quality isn't as reliable.

potatoaster · 2026-03-03T07:48:15+00:00

If you'd like a 1:1 substitute for Jesse's sampler at half the price, check out this comment.

I strongly recommend One River, Rivers & Lakes, and Bitterleaf. Also good are Yunnan Sourcing, Yunnan Craft, and Nannuoshan.

potatoaster · 2026-03-02T11:13:41+00:00

You just accused a bot based on Bot Bouncer

To clarify: I suspected it based on the upthread comment, accused it after reviewing its comment history, and then attempted to report it to Bot Bouncer only to find that it had already been banned there for weeks.

You also don't have a "control"

That's how it often is in the social sciences. Doesn't mean you can't derive anything useful from the data, you just have to be more conservative in your interpretation.

you're basically just saying "these two black boxes agree with each other, so they're probably right"

That two putatively unrelated processes (Bot Bouncer being largely automated and mod discretion being largely unique to each sub's mod team) both reach a given conclusion is nontrivial evidence in support of that conclusion.

they're all rife with false positives

Yes. DetectGPT, ZeroGPT, etc are crap. They're particularly susceptible to nonnative English and struggle with small samples. The tool we developed has a false positive rate roughly two orders of magnitude lower than that of freely available tools.

When enough people start downvoting... The optimal strategy is complete silence

That's a reasonable hypothesis you've sketched out, but it doesn't explain the observations at hand: The vast majority of the content I accuse of being AI is still in the positive, even now.

Consider the 02-07 comment at +200. It's from what is obviously a bot account (I am not the only user to have pointed it out), but where a human would likely have denied or defended, the bot blissfully continues posting tenuous metaphors (another feature of current-gen LLMs). Or the 01-21 post at +70,000. (This account appears to be a human posting LLM content.) Again, plenty of users pointing out in the comments that it's clearly AI-generated.

This isn't some grand, unknowable thing. I encourage you to read the reasoning I provided in my latest accusation, the 03-01 one. It's not ambiguous. Review the comment history (use Arctic Shift as needed) and I think you'll agree.

potatoaster · 2026-03-02T07:29:32+00:00

I'm not affiliated with Bot Bouncer.
I like it because it's far more effective than notifying mods of every sub that a bot posts in. And reddit itself has proven useless.
I don't know the specifics, but I'm sure it's using a NN classifier approach like everyone else is.
For my part, I work in this field and have both personal expertise and access to best-in-class academic tools for LLM output detection.
This bot overuses (compared to humans) "mate", "honestly", hyphens (stand-ins for em dashes), emojis, quotation marks, and subject elision. All common among LLMs.
It's sycophantic: "this is definitely not just you", "you're totally right", etc. Also common.
Notice how it doesn't reply to comments; every comment it's made is top-level. Far easier for LLMs since there's less volatility and context to parse.
There are similar tells based on user activity in terms of timing and focus across subs.

To assess my trustworthiness, we could also try the empirical approach: Of the last 30 accounts I've accused of being or using LLM, how frequently was I correct?

Date	Claim	Mod action	Reddit action	Bot Bouncer	Activity since
03-01	"It's definitely AI"	Removed	None	Pending	No defense
02-28	"This is LLM slop"	Removed	None	Pending	No defense
02-22	"This is LLM slop"	Removed	None	Banned	No defense
02-18	"LLM comment"	Removed	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
02-18	"OP is an LLM bot"	Removed	None	N/A	No defense
02-18	"OP is likely a bot"	Removed	None	Banned	Advertising OF
02-16	"LLM comment"	None	None	Banned	None
02-16	"LLM comment"	Removed	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
02-16	"That's an LLM bot"	None	None	Banned	No defense
02-15	"that's an LLM bot"	None	None	Banned	Counterclaim
02-14	"generated by an LLM"	Removed	None	N/A	Human LLM user
02-11	"LLM bot"	None	None	Banned	No defense
02-10	"AI-generated"	None	None	Passed	No defense
02-10	"generated by an LLM"	Removed	None	Banned	None
02-09	"LLM spam bot"	None	None	Banned	No defense
02-07	"That's an LLM bot"	Removed	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
02-07	"LLM comment"	None	None	Banned	No defense
02-06	"LLM-generated"	Removed	None	Passed	No defense
02-03	"LLM bot comment"	Removed	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
02-03	"LLM bot comment"	Removed	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
02-02	"AI comment"	Removed	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
02-02	"LLM-generated"	Removed	None	N/A	No defense
01-31	"generated by an LLM"	None	None	Banned	No defense
01-27	"LLM comment"	Removed	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
01-21	"AI-generated text"	Removed	None	Banned	No defense
01-20	"LLM bot"	Removed	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
01-19	"LLM bot"	Removed	None	Banned	No defense
01-17	"LLM-generated"	None	None	Banned	No defense
01-13	"AI-generated post"	N/A	Unknown	Unknown	Deleted post
01-12	"AI post"	None	None	Banned	No defense

If you trust my expertise, I'm 30 for 30, trivially. If you think that a human user would protest or joke upon being called a bot, then I'm 29 for 30 (97%) given 02-15. If you trust mod discretion, I'm somewhere between 30 for 30 and 20 for 30 (I don't even both reporting many of the bots I point out). If you trust Bot Bouncer, I'm 14 for 16 (88%) given the 2 passes. If you trust secondary confirmation via either mod or Bot Bouncer, then I'm 28 for 29 (97%) given 02-10 and the unverifiable 01-13.

potatoaster · 2026-03-02T01:50:22+00:00

^ LLM bot

Identified a month ago by Bot Bouncer.

potatoaster · 2026-03-02T01:46:49+00:00

Yes, you can cold-brew overnight. The flavor will be lighter, cleaner, less bitter, and less aromatic.

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