TeaΓÇöthe leaves of Camellia sinensis, an evergreen shrub related to the familiar domestic camelliaΓÇöwas first cultivated in China well over two thousand years ago. At first it was used as medicine and in Buddhist rituals, but in the fifth or sixth century a.d., it began to be drunk for pleasure. Today China remains a major producer of tea, but tea is also grown in appreciable quantities in Japan, India, Sri Lanka, and several parts of Africa. (There is also a tiny production in South Carolina, a tentative revival of a thriving colonial-era industry.) There are countless varieties of tea, andas with coffee or winesoil, climate, and the altitude at which the leaves are grown yield differences in flavor and aroma. But how tea leaves are processed accounts for enormous differences as well.
There are three principal methods of processing tea leaves, the results of which are known as green tea, black tea, and oolong tea. All start in more or less the same way: Tea leaves are brittle when fresh and must be ΓÇ£withered,ΓÇ¥ either in sunlight or in warm air, to be made supple enough to handle. They are then rolled, twisted, and lightly broken, usually by machine. The essential oils that give tea its flavor come to the surface at this point. If the process is now stopped by ΓÇ£firing,ΓÇ¥ or heating, the leaves, the tea is called green, even though its color may range from olive green to warm cream. All Japanese tea and most Chinese tea is green. Until the 1830s Americans drank only green tea, but consumption declined steadily after that to the point that it virtually ceased here. Today green tea is coming into fashion again, not only for its delicacy and flavor but also for its apparent health benefits. It is high in vitamins (especially C) and in antioxidants that some researchers believe might help prevent cancer and heart disease.
Tea leaves turn black if their flavor-giving oils are exposed for longer periods to airΓÇöusually very humid airΓÇöand allowed to oxidize. Oxidation not only darkens the color of the leaves but also allows them to develop new flavor compoundsΓÇöamong them the astringent ones technically called polyphenols but commonly known as tannins. Black tea is what most Westerners drink most of the time. (The Chinese call it red tea after the color of the brewed liquid.) When the British planted tea in India in the early 1800s, and in Ceylon slightly later, almost all of what was harvested was processed as black tea. Americans eventually inherited the British taste for tea processed this way.
The third main way to process tea is to allow it to oxidize only partially, so that some of the fresh flavors of green tea and some of the deeper flavors of black tea are combined. This kind of tea, called oolong, is produced in China and Taiwan; TaiwanΓÇÖs former name, Formosa, is still used for the oolong produced there, which some connoisseurs consider to be the best.
Almost all tea sold commercially is blended, and there are often as many as twenty or more varieties in a blendΓÇömost of them black. The names of these blends can be confusing. ΓÇ£PekoeΓÇ¥ and ΓÇ£orange pekoe,ΓÇ¥ for example, were originally grading terms but today are used by individual tea packers to describe house blends. English breakfast tea, supposedly blended for consumption by that nationality at that meal, traditionally contains a measure of richly aromatic Keemun, the best known of the many black teas produced in northern China. Keemun is sometimes packaged under its own name, as is Yunnan, the best-known black tea from southern China. YunnanΓÇÖs deep, full flavor, sometimes said to suggest mocha coffee, has made it a favorite black tea all over the world. The black tea of Assam, in northeastern India, usually forms the basis of Irish breakfast tea, which is known for its hearty character. (The Irish, who drink more tea per capita than any other nation, like their tea dark and full-bodied, and they are famously expert tea blenders.) Darjeeling is IndiaΓÇÖs most highly prized tea, but the term is sometimes used to describe a blend of less expensive black teas in the Darjeeling style.
