Aside from water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world.  And it is no wonder, thanks to its revitalizing properties and array of flavor profiles.  The primary tea plant, Camellia Sinesis is known to be native to southern China, where according to Chinese Legend tea was first prized for its botanic and medicinal properties as far back as 2737 B.C. by the Emperor Shen Nung who discovered tea while sitting under a wild tea tree and a breeze blew a few leaves into a pot of water he had simmering over a fire.

From these humble beginnings, tea has evolved over the centuries into the beverage we love today.  All tea comes from the tea plant.  What makes each tea unique is where it is grown, when the leaves are picked and how the leaves are processed.

There are four basic types of tea:

White Tea: new tea buds are picked before they open.  Then they are withered and dried resulting in the most unprocessed of all teas.  Mostly produced in China and Sri Lanka. Sometimes thought of as “an acquired taste” because of its gentle and delicate flavor profile, the subtlety and wonder of white tea is a true adventure, for the novice as well as the connoisseur.

Green Tea (unfermented): The picked leaves are dried and heat-treated to stop any fermentation.  In China green teas are mostly processed by roasting and in Japan they are usually steamed.  Flavor profiles of green teas range from earthy hay and mineral, to bright and grassy depending on where and how the leaves were processed.

Oolong Tea (semi-fermented): Oolong is mostly produced in China and Taiwan.  The leaves must not be picked too soon and are wilted in direct sunlight, shaken to slightly bruise the leaves and then dried for 1-2 hours before firing to halt the oxidation process.  Oolongs are beautifully mellow teas with flavor profiles ranging from musty, wet leaf notes to floral.

Black Tea (fermented): this process includes four steps: withering, rolling, fermenting & firing (or drying).  There is a vast variety of black teas from the delicate darjeeling to the bold Assam.  From India to China, black teas range in flavor and color depending on the production process.

Herbal Teas (tisanes): These teas actually contain no “tea” but are made of various parts of dried herbs and flowers(leaves, fruit, root, flower, bark, stems & seeds).

Author:  Marianne Sundquist, Bull Run’s Tea Sommelier