Modern white tea invented in 1989?

[mbanu]

I found a very interesting article on Tea & Coffee Asia that suggests that modern white tea as a style is only 21 years old, a resurrection of an old tea style that occurred when a wild-growing white tea plant was found in Anji. Does anyone have any more info on this? When did "white tea" originally go into decline? Was the processing method reconstructed from old documents, or were they invented in the 1980s after trying to determine how to best take the best advantage of the tea's characteristics?

[debunix]

This is a very interesting article, but it clearly applies only to the Anji white tea, which as they state clearly in this article, really is processed as a green tea, with a kill-enzyme step. I happened to have been working my way through a thermos of this tea at the time I was reading the article (synchronicity!), and enjoyed it very much.

White tea as a category--Bai Mu Dan, Silver Needles, etc, was certainly not invented in 1989.

[mbanu]

Ahh, I see now. My, what a careful reading the next day will do for understanding.