What is Tea?
Tea is the second-most consumed drink in the world, surpassed only by water. An often-surprising fact to tea novices is that all teas (Black, Green, Oolong, White) come from the same plant. The scientific name of this versatile plant is Camellia Sinensis. Camellia Sinensis is a sub-tropical evergreen plant native to Asia but now grown around the world. The tea plant grows best in loose, deep soil, at high altitudes, and in sub-tropical climates. So, in short, "tea" is anything derived from the Camellia Sinensis plant. Anything else, while sometimes called "tea", is more accurately referred to as an herbal tea or tisane. Tisanes include chamomile, Rooibos and fruit teas.
How is it grown?
The tea plant, which grows naturally in the wild through much of Asia, is cultivated in a variety of settings from small family gardens to giant estates covering thousands of acres. The best tea is usually grown at elevation, and often, on steep slopes. The terrain requires that these premium teas be hand-picked. Many of the teas that are grown for tea bags or iced teas, on the other hand, are grown on large, flat, lowland areas to allow for machine harvesting.
Teas that are hand picked and processed in the traditional fashion are called Orthodox Teas. Orthodox teas generally contain only the top two leaves and the unopened bud, which are picked carefully by hand and then processed in varying ways to reach the desired result and bring out the characteristics of the tea. While tea plants do have yellow-white flowers approximately 1 to 1.5 inches in diameter, the "buds" referred to in the tea trade are the young, unopened leaves - the newest, freshest growth.
Machine picked and processed teas are typically called CTC (Cut-Tear-Curl or sometimes, Crush-Tear-Curl) teas. These teas usually include the uppermost leaves and unopened buds, but also typically contain varying amounts of older leaves, stalks and stems. Depending on the quality of the tea and the care used in picking and processing, CTC teas can be of very good quality, but cannot compare to the quality of the best orthodox teas.
What is in tea?
The three primary components of brewed tea (also called the "liquor") are:
1. Essential Oils - these provide tea's delicious aromas and flavors.
2. Polyphenols - these provide the "briskness" or astringency in the mouth and are the components that also carry most of the health benefits of tea.
3. Caffeine - found naturally in coffee, chocolate, tea and Yerba Mate, caffeine provides tea's natural energy boost.
How the leaves are processed will determine their final classification as black, white, green, and oolong teas. We'll discuss these styles of tea in the next lesson.
Although tea is one of the most enjoyed beverages worldwide, it is also one of the least known. For example, most tea drinkers in Darjeeling, India have never drank (or even heard of!) a Japanese Hojicha. This is primarily due to the fact that the enjoyment of most teas remains mainly isolated to that tea-growing region. Luckily, with the dawn of transportation and creation of clever online tea education courses, this naïveté will soon be a thing of the past.
