Tea for dummies

It has struck me how little most people know about tea, altough according to wikipedia, it is the second most popular beverage in the world after water. As a genuine tea aficionado, and in attempt to save the world of it's blatant tea ignorance, I present to thee : "Tea For Dummies" (tm).

There are a few mythical stories about the origin of tea. Some mention a famous chinese emperor, in other versions of the story it's a famous buddhist monk. Apparantly he was sitting under a tree drinking boiled water, when some leaves fell into his cup. (Drinking boiled water is still commonplace in China). Curiously he took a sip, and noticed what a great taste and nice refreshing effect the tea had on him.

Tea versus herbal infusions

Tea is made by steeping the leaves of the Camelia Sinensis in warm water. Many other plants can be used to make an infusion like roseship or chamomile, however these are not teas. So roseship tea for instance is in fact a misnomer. This is a very common misconception. Sometimes tea is combined with herbs or flowers to create scented tea, like the jasmine tea that is so popular in China. These scented teas are in fact real teas. However one may wonder whether the manufacturer is trying to conceal the taste of inferior tea by adding things to it.

The question of teabags

In 1908 a tea importer in New York sent samples of his teas to his customers. The samples were in little silk bags. The customers misunderstood their purpose and soked the bags with the tea. When afterwards they bought his tea, they were disappointed to notice it didn't come in the neat little silk bags. So he came up with a cheaper alternative for silk, and the tea bag was born.

Very nice story, but tea bags are evil. Tea in a bag doesn't have the space to fully spread its aroma. Tea in bags is also usually of inferior quality, being almost grinded to dust, where quality tea is always sold loose, the leaves still intact. It may seem a bit of a hassle to make tea without a bag, but with a just a little bit of equipment (a tea-egg for instance), it's really just as easy.

Green teas, black teas, and the ones in between

Once tea is harvested, a process of oxidation starts (usually called fermentation, altough this isn't completely right). At a certain point in time the tea will be dried, either by steaming it or by pan-frying, to make the oxidation stop.

If this is done almost immediatly, the leaves are still mostly green and the result is known as, I'm not kidding you here, green tea. Sometimes this process goes on for several weeks, in that case the tea is known as black tea (referred to in China as red tea). The in between varieties are known as Oolong (or Wulong). The color of the beverage ranges from green over light yellow to dark yellow. Light oolongs are my personal favorite.

Whole books have been written on the subject, however by now at least you should have a basic understanding of what tea is about. For further reading have a look at wikipedia, or check out Seven Cups, they have a great collection of quality teas for sale on-line, plus a lot of interesting info on the subject.
And if anyone is ever wondering what to buy me for a present, just tell them I'd like the Oolong from the Dong Ding mountain in Taiwan.