Anji Baicha is a green tea by national standard, not a white tea — its pale color comes from a temperature-sensitive cultivar, not from a white-tea withering process.
Anji Baicha (安吉白茶) is one of the clearest examples on this site of a tea name actively misleading beginners. “白茶” literally means “white tea,” and the dry leaf and infused leaf really do look pale — almost white in the highest grades. But China’s national geographical-indication standard for this tea, GB/T 20354-2006, explicitly classifies Anji Baicha as green tea, not white tea. The name describes a color, not a processing category.
The reason for the color is a specific cultivar, not a specific process. Anji Baicha is made only from Bai Ye Yi Hao (白叶一号, “White Leaf No. 1”), a cultivar whose new spring shoots emerge naturally jade-white. As ambient temperature rises past roughly 23°C, the leaf color gradually shifts from white toward green — meaning the same bush produces progressively less pale-colored leaf as the season warms. That’s a cultivar-specific pigment behavior triggered by temperature, unrelated to white tea’s actual defining trait: minimal processing through withering and drying rather than kill-green.
Processing confirms the green-tea classification directly. Anji Baicha goes through kill-green (杀青) — the same heat-fixation step used across green tea production to halt oxidation — followed by shaping into one of two recognized forms: dragon-shaped (龙形), a flat, pressed style similar in silhouette to Longjing, or phoenix-shaped (凤形), a straighter strip style with visible buds. True white tea never goes through kill-green at all.
One standard-documented fact worth knowing for buyers: the national standard sets a notably high minimum for free amino acids (≥5.0% by mass), well above what’s typical for green tea generally, and amino acids are strongly associated with savory, umami-like sweetness in the cup. The standard doesn’t explain the biochemical reason behind this elevated level, so this page states the number without inventing a cause for it.
Anji Baicha is protected geographically as well as botanically — the GI standard restricts the name to tea grown within a defined coordinate range inside Anji County, Zhejiang, using only the Bai Ye Yi Hao cultivar. A pale-colored green tea grown elsewhere, or from a different cultivar, isn’t entitled to the name even if it looks similar in the cup.
See the Green Tea guide for where Anji Baicha fits among China’s other green teas, and Baihao Yinzhen for a genuine white tea to compare against — a useful side-by-side for seeing exactly what separates the two categories.
Look · Dry leaf
Top-grade dragon-shaped leaf is described in the standard as flat, smooth, straight and tapered, with a pale jade-green color; top-grade phoenix-shaped leaf is described as straight with visible buds, plump and even, tinged gold at the edge. The distinctive pale color comes from the cultivar (see below), not from a white-tea-style withering process.
Smell & taste
Typical aroma: fresh, sweet, persistent. Flavor tendencies: fresh, mellow, sweet, smooth. Body: light-medium. These vary by batch, storage and brewing.
Brew · A starting point
Try 3 g in 150 ml water at 80–85°C for 60–90 seconds. Fully decant before tasting.
Read the wet leaves
Top grades are described in the standard as showing white leaf with jade-green veins ("叶白脉翠"), the bud typically longer than the leaf at the highest grade. This white-leaf, green-vein pattern is a cultivar trait tied to temperature, not a white-tea processing effect.
Sources & review
Compiled by ChinaTea101's editors from Chinese national and industry tea standards and reference material, then fact-checked. Last reviewed 2026-09-25. How we check claims
- Standard GB/T 20354-2006 地理标志产品 安吉白茶 (Geographical indication product — Anji Baicha) — National Public Service Platform for Standards Information (SAMR). Current standard; status checked on the national standards platform. View source ↗