Hot-Air Withering Beats Tradition on Taste, Study Finds
A metabolomics study in Frontiers in Nutrition found hot-air withering produced better taste scores and more amino acids and catechins than traditional room-temperature withering.
Hot-air withering at 28 degrees Celsius (about 82 Fahrenheit) scored best on taste among four withering methods tested, a study published Thursday found.
The study, in Frontiers in Nutrition, compared traditional withering at 20 degrees Celsius (68 Fahrenheit) for 40 hours against three heated treatments held at 28 degrees: hot air for 23 hours, sunlight for 28 hours, and a fluorescent lamp for 31 hours. Hongchun Cui and six co-authors identified 1,372 metabolites across the four.
The leaf was the Longjing 43 cultivar.
All three heated treatments raised organic acids, amino acids, flavonoids and catechins against the room-temperature control, the researchers found. Between the heated methods, hot air's amino acids and flavonoids ran higher than the fluorescent lamp's, which the researchers said may explain its edge in the taste scores. Hot air also finished soonest, in 23 hours against the traditional method's 40.
Sources: Frontiers in Nutrition, Non-volatile metabolomics analysis of heating withering method for processing white tea from Longjing 43 tea variety by UHPLC-Q-TOF/MS.
Correction, October 2, 2026: An earlier version said the researchers used Longjing 43 as a controlled substrate to isolate the withering variable, that it is not a white tea trade cultivar, and that no new product follows from the work. The paper states none of these and gives no reason for its choice of cultivar.
Correction, October 3, 2026: An earlier version said withering is the only step in which a white tea maker acts; drying is a step too.
Filed and Sealed
Related articles
Withering
How the leaf loses its water and becomes white tea: sun, indoor and heated withering, what the enzymes do during the wither, the moisture at which it ends, and what light has been found to change.
What Is White Tea
White tea is the least-processed tea class: the bud and leaf of Camellia sinensis, withered and dried, no pan-fire and no rolling. What that names, the four products, and the standard behind it.
In Two Studies, Heating Water Is a Top Carbon Stage for White Tea
Two cradle-to-grave studies of white tea, in Tamil Nadu and Fuding, find the drinker's water heating the largest emissions stage in one and one of two hotspots, beside processing, in the other.