The 6 Types Of Tea

hi i'm don from chinalife and today we're going to be talking about the different types of tea and their differences all tea comes from the tea plant which is camellia sinensis from there you have main varieties sinensis asamika and cambodi now most tea is made from sinensis and asamika varieties cambodia is the african strain which is hardly ever used to make tea from these varieties you have many hundreds if not thousands of sub-varieties and if a farmer takes a sub-variety and cultivates it it's called a cultivar so when you hear people talking about tea cultivars this is what they mean a sub-variety which has been cultivated for tea production a useful example to compare with is wine so all wine comes from the grape but there are many different varieties so you get your cabernet sauvignons your riojas your sauvignon blanc etc it's exactly the same for wine but if you take one cultivar and you plant it in one place in china and you take the same cultivar and plant it somewhere else the resulting tea will be different slightly and this is where the concept of tehuah comes into tea so the idea that the province the area the micro climate the production technique all affect the flavor of the tea different producers will have slightly different methods to produce their tea and they will all be using cultivars that they have developed over time to produce the best tasting tea so we're going to be talking about the different types of tea what keeps me in a job is that every year the tea changes now tea bag producers want to keep a consistent taste for tea so what they do is they blend tea from different estates to try and make the same constant taste year in year out what true connoisseurs of tea love is the differences in tea so we buy single estates tea which means that we go to different estates and we purchase the team we don't blend them at all so we get very pure tasting tea that captures the essence of the province that it's grown in and the production technique that the farmers have used there are six types of tea white yellow green oolong black and post fermented tea we're going to be talking about all of them but first before we go into that i want to talk about the main difference between them which is oxidation oxidation is a process by which the tea the tea leaf reacts with air so exactly in the same way as you cut an apple in half and as you cut the apple in half the juices are released those juices will react with the air and start to turn the apple brown it's exactly the same process that happens in the tea leaf so if i pick a tea leaf and i bruise the leaf slightly it releases some of the juices they react with the air and starts to turn the leaf darker there is an enzyme in the leaf that helps this process along so if i heat the leaf up to about 100 120 degrees celsius that enzyme becomes deactivated and therefore the leaf stops any possible oxidation in this way we can fix a leaf from very light to very dark so now we're going to talk about each t-type individually white tea is the least processed of all the teas the tea producer will pick the bugs and sometimes the small leaves and be very careful not to bruise the plant in any way they will then solar wither which means basically they put it out under the sun and allow the tea buds to start to dry once completely dry the tea is ready and therefore the tea is very very low in processing and very close to the natural state of the tea plant the reason why it's called white tea is because the tea buds still have little white downy hairs growing on it once brewed the bud turns a lovely beautiful light green jade color the flavor profile of this tea is very light very elegant has a kind of slight nutty notes to it sometimes you get some floral fragrance and a little bit of fruit sweetness because the tea has been dried over a period of time that means the tea is actually slightly oxidized something like 5 to 10 so you get some strength to it but it is extremely light and good for meditative purposes i like to drink this tea in the morning or during quieter times when you can really focus in on the cup i highly recommend if you haven't tried it before to get some quality white tea and take a moment during your day just to sit back and sip a beautiful light meditative brew green tea is made from the young buds and leaves of the tea plant it's an unoxidized tea so the process to make this tea has to be done with utter care and delicacy because if you bruise the leaf in any way it'll start to oxidize so the producers will hand pick the bud and usually first two leaves of the plant it's then quickly brought back to the tea production area where it's withered for a little while under the sun and then it's pan baked the reason why they pan bake it is it needs to be cooked to a certain temperature to deactivate the enzyme in the leaf to stop any oxidation this process is also called the stay green process for obvious reasons the major difference between chinese green tea and japanese green tea is the heating process that they use to deactivate the enzyme the japanese steam their leaf and the chinese pan fry their leaf in quite large uh big woks basically that's why japanese green tea tends to have a little bit more of a kind of fresher grassy flavors whereas the chinese tea whilst having some grassy flavors tends to be a little bit nuttier a bit more complex and a bit more toasted you may have read lots and lots about the health benefits of green tea and indeed there are many however all tea is very healthy for you they just have slightly different levels of different antioxidants if you're interested to find out about the health benefits of the tea then i recommend that you go to our website and take a look at our health benefits guide on tea in terms of the flavor of green tea it's fresh it's slightly grassy slightly astringent now some people may think it's bitter but it has a slight dryness or astringency and it's also got toasted nutty notes because of the pan frying nature of it it usually has quite a clean finish when you look at the wet leaf you can see from high quality tea you should be able to see the bud and the first two leaves and you can see that there's very little dark areas on the leaf so you can see it's unoxidized tea i like to drink green tea in the morning because contrary to a lot of misinformation online green tea actually has the highest amount of caffeine compared to other teas this is balanced out by higher levels of theanine in the leaf which actually makes you feel quite calm so you get that lovely sensation of being alert but relaxed at the same time so the next time you need a pick-me-up green tea is your tea of choice yellow tea is probably the most rare of all the teas accounting for maybe less than half a percent of the total tea production in china yellow tea used to be an imperial tribute tea which meant it was reserved only for the emperors the reason for that is yellow used to be the colour of the emperors in ancient china the method to make yellow tea was actually lost for over a hundred years and rediscovered in the 1970s and since the 1970s they've started to produce yellow tea again in china in small quantities and now it's still considered an imperial tribute however the emperors in china have been replaced by the politicians so this is a gift tea given to vips and people of importance yellow tea is made in a very similar way to green tea so they take the bud in the first leaf or the first two leaves they wither it under the sun and then they pan fry it to deactivate the enzyme that causes oxidation but after this point yellow tea differs in its processing what they do is they steam the leaf and they pile it up and then they cover the leaf so it has a time to heat in a moist environment what this does is this starts to leach out and remove some of the grassier elements of the tea in china they call it reabsorbing its own flavor and it softens the tea and brings the flavor profile something closer to a white tea so yellow tea in terms of flavor is in between white and green tea so let's take a look at the wet leaf you can see in this case it's one bud and one leaf and it's extremely pale very light you can see that they were picked from baby leaves in terms of the flavor profile yellow tea is very pure it's kind of like summer dew it has a beautiful lingering sweetness it has some of the freshness of green tea but the softness and elegance of a white tea i like to drink this throughout the day but i wouldn't pair it with food because it's too light it's very calming and relaxing so if you find that life is getting a bit too hectic treat yourself to a very rare tea and escape with a cup of yellow oolong tea is semi-oxidized tea this means that the leaf has been oxidized anywhere between 15 up to about 80 85 so you get a wide variety of flavors the processing technique is that they pick the leaves when they're a little bit larger sometimes two sometimes three leaves and then they wither it under the sun and then they roll or shake the leaf what that does is that starts to bruise the edge of the leaf and that releases some of the essential oils of the tea which react with the air and start to oxidize once the perfect level of oxidation has been reached they then pan fry the leaf to stop the oxidation process and then the leaf goes through many different processes of rolling and drying and you get either a ball rolled oolong which are oolong leaves that have been rolled into small tightly packed balls or you have what is known as strip oolong where the oolong still resembles strips of individual leaves what i have before me here is a lie too long this is about 15 15 to 20 oxidized and i have a medium to dark oolong something in the region of 60 70 percent oxidized they do go darker than this in terms of flavor profile because of the fact that you have light oolongs all the way to dark oolongs it varies very widely with the lie too long as you tend to get freshness but you also get some floral notes and a little bit of creaminess and sometimes some nuttiness as the leaf gets darker you start to develop sweetness fruitiness it becomes slightly drier and you get some toasted roasted nuts most of these oolongs once they've finished the production process go through some level of roasting just to accentuate the flavors and bring a bit more complexity if you look at the actual wet leaves you can see that the leaves are no longer green they have a kind of khaki color as it's slightly oxidized you may also notice the edge of the leaf is actually quite red that's when they bruise the leaf either through shaking it or through rolling it the edging of the leaf starting to become damaged so this is a light oolong and this here is a medium to dark oolong you can see it's darker slightly more of a copper colour but you can still see the greenness of it so the beauty of oolong teas is retaining the freshness of green teas but the sweetness depth and complexity of the darker teas and because of the varied nature of their flavors you can pair it with all sorts of food darker ones obviously for more robust foods so treat it similar to maybe a red wine so with with gamey meats or with some rich curry dishes oolong dakulong teas are great for desserts green oolongs are perfect because the milky nutty creamy notes of the green teas bring out the sweetness and creaminess of desserts so next time you are looking for something to excite your taste buds oolong tea is the way to go black tea in china is called red tea hong cha the reason why it's called red tea is because the color of the liquor is actually red in the rest of the world we call it black tea black tea is known as fully oxidized tea although this is a little bit of a misnomer because it's not fully oxidized but it's probably somewhere between 90 to 95 percent oxidized what they do is they pick the leaf young leaves again and they either hand roll it or mechanically they use a rolling machine to bruise the leaf entirely that releases all of the essential oils those essential oils react with the air and oxidize which changes the chemical composition of the leaf and alters the health benefits and the flavor so what happens through the oxidation process is tannins develop and the tea becomes richer stronger and more robust it makes this tea suitable for combining with milk if you so wish however i would advise you when drinking fine whole leaf chinese tea to try to drink it without the milk first because you're going to pick up all of the intricacies and subtleties of the tea which will be lost when you combine it with milk you can see this black tea here this is called golden bud it has lots of nice little golden buds mixed in it it's a lovely black tea from yunnan province if i take one of the leaves you'll see it's again a very small leaf but it's a much darker brown a very kind of dark copper color again it's not fully oxidized somewhere between 90 to 95 percent obviously black tea is very robust very satisfying flavor it has malty notes sweet notes sometimes you can get some dried fruit notes in the liquor as well the aroma is very comforting so this is the kind of tea that we turn to in times of a little bit of distress we want to kind of relax unwind and have a nice satisfying brew post fermented tea is a class of tea which is very different from the others this is tea that's actually been allowed to ferment one of the most classic examples of post-fermented tea is puarti puerti comes from yunnan province in the southwest of china this area is the motherland of tea the earth is extremely dark and rich and growing in this forests are semi-wild old-age big leaf tea trees it's a very specific cultivar of tea tree which has been allowed to grow so the leaves are large and they've actually become trees the special thing about this tea tree is that if you pick the leaf and you treat it exactly the same way as a green tea so you pick it you wither it you pan fry it to deactivate oxidation but then you pack it into small cakes you may see cakes like this or larger cakes and leave it over the years the microorganisms that exist naturally on the leaf allow the tea to ferment and as it ferments the tea darkens becomes smoother and the health properties and benefits change as it ferments over time now i have here one pellet of puarti so you can take a look here the aging time for puati from raw leaf to fully aged fully fermented purity is around 20 to 25 years this is 23 years old so you can see that it's slightly darker than a green tea would be but if i left this over time for another five six seven years it would grow even darker because of the fact that the chinese are very industrious and they want to produce tea as quickly as possible they decided that 20 to 25 years was very long time to wait to be able to sell their properly aged puerti so they devised a new method of fermenting the tea by speeding up the process so what they do is they pick the leaf and then they pile the leaf after they've fried it they pile it in large clean warehouses they turn up the temperature and the humidity and this accelerates the fermentation process it's a very skilled process they have to go in every day and rake the leaves to prevent any must or molds from developing but they've managed to cut down the time from 20 to 25 years to about two months so you can imagine how much faster the fermentation process processes so with puerti you have two strains of puerto you have raw purity they have that has been allowed to age naturally and then you have got cooked puati which is tea that has been artificially fermented faster than normal in terms of the flavors the flavor of pure is very very earthy it's like sticking your nose in a big pile of autumn leaves so you want that real rich earthy taste some people are a little bit put off kuwaiti because sometimes if it's not been rinsed properly it can have a slight marine water seaweed kind of note to it but the flavor when you drink it is extremely earthy extremely clean and very very fresh it's a delicious tea and it's extremely healthy for you the fermentation process actually creates natural statins in the tea that help to lower your cholesterol so a lot of people use this tea as a way of controlling cholesterol levels another great use of puerti is to use as a digestive so drinking it after a meal when you've had a heavy meal it's a perfect way to digest so if you've indulged in a curry or a really rich meal i suggest that you pick up a pot of puerti scented tea is any tea which has been centered with another flower usually the base of tea that is used is a green tea however you can get white teas and you can get scented oolong teas but green tea is the classic tea to use the most common scented tea is jasmine tea it's a very common misconception that jasmine tea comes from the jasmine plant it doesn't it's usually a green tea which has been centered with fresh jasmine flowers the process is actually very labor intensive to get it right so what they do is they take good quality green tea process it allow it to dry then spread it out over a large clean warehouse they then go out and pick many tens of thousands of jasmine flowers with the petals still closed they take those flowers and they sprinkle it over and amongst the green tea overnight the petals open and release the fragrance of jasmine into the tea the next morning the factory workers and tea producers need to go back and pick off every single dried jasmine flower this is extremely labor-intensive work the reason for that is that you don't actually want to drink the dried flowers because that imparts a bitter note to the tea you just want the fragrance of the jasmine aroma if you go into a shop and you see some jasmine tea that's mixed up with lots of jasmine flowers you know that this is very low quality tea but is a common trick used by western tea suppliers because they think that visually you'll be fooled by the fact that there are lots of jasmine flowers amongst it once the flowers have been removed they then have to leave the tea to dry for a couple of days and then they repeat the process so they go out pick tens of thousands more flowers and repeat the process because you want to infuse jasmine tea at least three times to get a really nice powerful aroma this is dragon pearl jasmine this has been infused five times and that takes about two weeks of work and many many hundreds of thousands of jasmine flowers the reason why they roll it into these tight balls is that locks in the jasmine fragrance as i said you can get other types of scented tea rose scented tea osmanthus scented tea but what you want to try and avoid like the plague is any artificially scented tea so anything that reads like chocolate flavored tea or hazelnut flavored tea you know has been centered using either essential oils or even worse artificial flavors so avoid those go for naturally centered teas the real beauty of scented teas is to get the flavor of tea and the aroma of the flower and it's this combination which is so delightful so if you're looking for a cup of tea that is inspiring and enlightening then centered tea is the way to go if you fancy a little bit of theatre in your cup then go for some blossoming tea blossoming tea is made using long white tea buds which are then sewed together by hand by very skilled chinese artisans and inside they sew in a beautiful floral display so let's brew this up and you can see what it looks like so as the buds open up they reveal the beautiful floral display inside this is a perfect gift team it's also great if you're entertaining guests at a dinner party because if you bring this out at the end of the meal everyone can sit and appreciate the art of this beautiful artisan blossoming tea so that was the very basic guide to the different types of tea there's plenty more information out there please visit our website you can download a tea guide and follow us on twitter like us on facebook and join in the tea conversation

Channel: Mei Leaf

Views: 357,881

Keywords: tea, types of tea, white tea, green tea, yellow tea, oolong tea, black tea, red tea, post fermented tea, puerh tea, puer tea, mei leaf, tea education, don mei, chinalife, chinese tea, taiwanese tea, tea types, different types of tea, tea (product line), gong fu cha, gong fu brewing, чай, зеленый чай, черный чай, китайский чай, белый чай, типы чая, польза чая, health benefits

Id: EUuw5rqWkZU

Length: 24min 18sec (1458 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 01 2013