Green Tea Forum

Manji2012 · Uh, Can I Add Sugar? Joined: 04 Apr 2008 Posts: 14

There are various forms of tea that I am aware of, White tea, green tea, red tea, and black tea.

I assume they basically come from the plant, the same bush, but the various teas comes from fermentation. There first leaves are more whitish and very fresh and that would be the White tea.

I wonder, what does White tea taste like? I hear it is very healthy.

Next comes the green tea as the leaf is "dying" or fermenting, rotting, spoiling. This is why green tea is processed to prevent oxidation because if it ferments it's gonna get brown and become something like oolong I assume.

But what about red tea? I assume it ferments to red possibly before it turns brown. I wonder what it tastes like.

Then the last fermentation is black tea. I wonder how Chinese black teas compare to Western Black teas like, earl grey versus some chinese tea that is black too.

Boy, so much tea I doubt I would every be able to taste them all but I can get an idea.

It is not only the type of tea but the quality too.

Which do you prefer?

I prefer incredible deep flavor tea I guess. Oolongs and green tea are the best I think but you never know until you try it all.

So, have I got the right idea about the various types of tea.

Oni · 2nd Degree Black Belt Joined: 15 Mar 2008 Posts: 194

Yes all tea come from camelia sinensis, that is latin for the plant species, it means something like "the chinese plant", but think of it as a plant family it has thousands of variations and forms from small bushes to huge trees, each tipe tastes diffrently so don`t imagine that all look and taste the same and from one type of bush you can make each and every kind of tea, there are also wild arbors ( pu erh is made from it ) and there are cross breeds, the magic of japanese gardening gave us saemidori, there are breeds (rare) that have "natural gyokuro flavour" like asatsuyu, and for example yabukita breed is not suitable for gyokuro and matcha, only gokoh, komakage, samidori, okumidori etc., not to speak of, as it is with fine wines the soil and climate plays an important role in the teas taste and finishing. And you mentioned red tea, there is no such thing as western black tea, tea was introduced to europe by the british, there was a princess from Portugal who was introduced to tea drinking, after she married the king of GB, tea spread like wildfire among the nobility, even today it is a symbol of royalty, tea came from the silk road to Afrika, and the british imported tea from india, so "western" black tea is indian tea, and later on for example the british made their own plantation in Darjeeling from teaplants imported from china and earl grey belgamot oil method is of chinese origins. Don`t forget the world of pu-erh, that is like wine the older the more mature and imagine that a very good old pu-erh can yield up to 20 flavour full infusions, I have only tried great japanese tea, mostly sencha, we live here on limited buget, so gyokuro is only on weekends and I have invested around 500$ in authentic handmade teaware for japanese tea because I belive that each tea needs the traditional teaware for preparation but I must say I am amazed by the strong and fresh flavour of japanese green tea, I want to invest in discovering good gyokuro and sencha after that matcha, and maybe next year chinese teas, so I`ve only read this stuff, I have a little experience in sencha and minor in gyokuro, the rest are from readings and still the world of tea fascinates me.