The Rare White Tea Untouched by Human Hands

At Handunugoda Tea Estate on Sri Lanka’s southern coast, an unusually scarce tea begins at the tip of an unopened bud.

Veidehi Gite

Fri, September 4, 2026 at 1:30 PM UTC

Key Takeaways

Handunugoda Tea Estate in Sri Lanka produces a scarce white tea made exclusively from unopened tea buds, which are carefully clipped without being touched by hand and minimally processed.
Unlike black tea, which is withered, rolled, and processed with machinery, Handunugoda's white tea rests overnight in a cool, dark room before it is ready to brew, resulting in a pale, delicate tea with floral aromas and lingering sweetness.
White tea should be brewed gently with water heated to 158 to 167°F and can be steeped two or three additional times, with slightly longer steeping times for each infusion.

The first lesson at Handunugoda Tea Estate has nothing to do with tea.

"Look closely," says Subaweerage Dias, Handunugoda Tea Estate 's agricultural guide, stopping underneath a climbing pepper vine. The berries, he explains, "start out green before ripening to red. We harvest and dry them until they blacken." A few minutes later, he plucks a cinnamon leaf , crushes it gently between his palms, and holds it out. It smells distinctly citrusy. We've yet to see a single tea bush, and Dias is in no hurry. Instead, he wanders deeper into the estate, pausing beneath towering gliricidia trees.

The trees had been planted years before any tea, "to shelter young saplings from the southern sun," says Dias. When the rains arrive, the branches are cut back and left where they fall, returning to the soil as compost. After nearly half an hour, we stop beside a row of neatly pruned bushes. "Now, we can talk about tea," he says.

More specifically, we can talk about white tea, an unusual and scarce tea that Handunugoda is known for. Located about 20 miles southeast of Galle, Sri Lanka, the tea estate offers a guided tour of the estate, factory, and museum, as well as a tea tasting for curious visitors.

White tea comes from the young buds of the same tea plant that black tea does, but is harvested and handled differently. "Silver needle is a type of white tea, and both white and black tea come from the same tea bush," says Dias. The difference has everything to do with timing.

White tea begins as the unopened bud at the tip of a new shoot. (If left on the plant, they would mature and open into leaves that would be harvested for black tea.) Dias points toward a bud scarcely larger than a thumbnail. I would have walked straight past it. That tiny bud represents the estate's most valuable harvest.

Sri Lankan tea is often discussed as a product, yet its character begins much earlier — in the terrain in which it grows, the climate, the soil, and the way the leaves are handled. "Every decision, from the terroir and climate to the way the leaves are plucked and processed, shapes the character of the final cup," says Hashan Cooray, director of Jetwing Hotels in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka's white tea production

From the highlands of Uva and Nuwara Eliya to the southern lowlands, Sri Lanka's varied regions produce teas with markedly different flavors, aromas, and strengths. At Handunugoda, that distinction is embedded in the landscape itself.

The idea of white tea comes from accounts of an old Chinese imperial practice in which tea leaves for the emperor were picked without being touched by hand. Sri Lankan planter Herman Gunaratne adapted that tradition here.

White tea plants remain in the nursery for eight months before being transplanted into the fields. Another two years pass before they are ready for harvesting. Once mature, they produce a fresh flush every seven days. They are pruned every three years, and a single tea bush continues producing for 15 or 20 years. The scarcity is not simply a matter of what is harvested, but what is deliberately left out: the leaves, machinery, and scale of conventional tea production. Why every seven days? "Because that's how long it takes for another shoot to grow," says Dias.

A plantation stretching across hundreds of acres produces remarkably little of its most celebrated tea. An entire day's work by one harvester yields only about an ounce of buds. This helps explain why the tea commands a premium price: What is scarce is not the tea plant itself, but the small fraction of each new flush that can be used for this particular tea.

Related: Maghrebi Mint Tea

Harvesting and processing white tea

The two women assigned to harvest the tea use scissors to clip each unopened bud before placing it into ceramic bowls, avoiding direct contact with the delicate buds. They are then laid on trays inside a cool, dark room overnight. No rollers. No dryers. No furnaces. By the next morning, the tea is ready to steep and sip.

In comparison, the mature leaves used to make black tea undergo a high-touch process.

The clatter of machinery echoes across the estate long before Dias pushes open the heavy wooden doors of the factory. Inside, fresh green leaves are spread across long withering troughs. "Here, they spend the night losing moisture before being transformed into black tea," he says. Beyond them stand cast-iron rollers, polished by more than a century of use. Some of the machines, he says, "had arrived from England and Ireland over 145 years ago and continue to operate much as they always had."

A newer electronic sorting machine, imported from Japan, now uses cameras to identify stems, separating them from the finished tea far more efficiently than workers once could. Those stems return to the estate as fertilizer. From robust Pekoes to English Breakfast blends, the machines handle much of Handunugoda's diverse catalog. The untouched white tea is an exception.

Why Handunugoda's white tea is untouched

At the estate's tea heritage museum, historical displays sit alongside Handunugoda's tea catalog, where names such as Ceylon Flowery Camellia and Souchong hint at decades of experimentation beyond the famous Virgin White Tea. Among the exhibits, one name appears repeatedly: Herman Gunaratne . The museum introduces him not simply as the founder of Handunugoda, but as a planter willing to challenge convention. Gunaratne's revival of the ancient imperial concept of untouched white tea was about questioning modern production. If the finest bud already possessed everything it needed, why interfere with it?

That connection becomes clear when the tea is tasted. Since white tea is made from young buds, its flavor is much lighter and more delicate than that of black tea. It is very pale, with a faint floral aroma, never heavy or tannic. On the palate, it's delicate, with a sweetness that lingers long after the tea is finished. The flavor arrives slowly — it is the kind of tea that rewards attention.

White tea doesn't just offer an exceptional flavor — it also contains more antioxidants than other teas. "Like other teas made from Camellia sinensis , white tea contains polyphenols, compounds with high antioxidant activity," says Dias. "Our estate's Virgin White Tea has an antioxidant content of 10.11%, based on SGS Switzerland testing, which is the highest naturally occurring antioxidant level in any known beverage." For Dias, the appeal is less about making a health claim than about what these compounds contribute to the tea's character.

How to make white tea at home

Tea specialists suggest handling this kind of tea gently: Use about 1 to 2 teaspoons of buds for 200 milliliters of filtered or spring water, heated to 158 to 167°F. Let the first infusion steep for around two minutes. You can reuse the leaves for two or three more infusions, adding about 30 to 60 seconds to the steeping time each time. The color changes slightly with the second and third infusions.

Herman Teas currently sells the estate's white tea directly online in loose-leaf and teabag packages and ships internationally.

For other white tea offerings, there are several options available. Rishi Tea & Botanicals sells Silver Needles from Yunnan as well as Fuding Silver Needles from China; San Francisco's Red Blossom Tea Company carries Silver Needle Reserve; Teance in Berkeley sells Silver Needle King's Grade; and Harney & Sons offers both Chinese Silver Needle and Sri Lankan Ceylon Vintage Silver Tips.

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