The Average Color of Tea
This is a composite image from photos of 85 different teas spanning green, yellow, white, oolong, black, and post-fermented teas. The “average color of tea” if you will.
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What is a varietal tea?
The word varietal is one that is often misused in the tea world (and also in the wine world). It is often erroneously used interchangeably with the word variety. Here’s the correct definition: Varietal (adj) – a varietal tea is one that was made from a single variety of Camellia sinensis. Correct usage: Tieguanyin is [...]
read more »Tea Varieties and Cultivars
Plants are classified hierarchically by their division, class, subclass, order, family, genus, and species. They are also classified by variety and cultivar when necessary. Here’s how the tea plant shakes out: Division -> Magnoliophyta Class -> Magnoliopsida Subclass -> Dilleniidae Order -> Theales Family -> Theaceae Genus -> Camellia Species -> Sinensis [Source: http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=Casi16] Since [...]
read more »Tea Chemistry
Tea chemistry is complex. Just how complex? Well, on the bush, tea leaves contain thousands of chemical compounds, when they are processed, these compounds break down, form complexes and form new compounds. When we steep tea leaves, our senses are tingled by the thousands of volatile compounds (collectively known as the “aroma complex”) from the [...]
read more »Where tea is grown in the United States
Is tea grown in the United States? It sure is! American grown tea is growing in popularity. Tea farms have been popping up all around the country, here’s a run-down of what we’ve got so far (this post will be updated periodically): Farms currently producing US grown tea: Alabama Fairhope Tea Plantation – [article] South [...]
read more »Tea in Michigan
Katie and I were attending a wedding in Traverse City, Michigan last fall and while heading to Sleeping Bear Dunes, we made an awesome discovery. We happened upon a small tea shop called “Light of Day Organics” – we were surprised to learn that the owner, Angela Macke not only grows 240 different ingredients for her [...]
read more »Simple Classification Rules for Finished Tea
Tea has been categorized many ways: by the color of the finished leaves, the color of the tea liquor, and by the percentage of oxidation the tea has gone through during processing. I recognize 7 major types of tea as they relate to the processing methods that created them: green, yellow, white, oolong, black, post-fermented, [...]
read more »Beginner’s Guide to Steeping Japanese Green Tea
Did you know that green tea is the most popular type of tea in Asia? It’s the most consumed tea in China, and Japan practically specializes in it. Steeping Japanese green tea isn’t particularly difficult, you just have keep some points in mind. Aren’t Japanese and Chinese green teas the same? There is one major [...]
read more »Posted on February 10th, 2013 Written by Ricardo Caicedo
British Tea Culture
British Tea Culture, we all know it exists, we all know it’s important, but what exactly does it mean? I set out to figure this out by interviewing over 110 people from the United Kingdom about their tea habits. I wanted to see what makes their tea culture unique across all social classes. I deliberately did [...]
read more »I’m speaking at the 2013 World Tea Expo
I’m speaking at World Tea Expo this year, if you are going and you own a tea company or are thinking about starting a tea company, you should probably come. I’m going to be covering the trends in digital marketing for the year. This isn’t 100 level social media, blogging and seo stuff, this is [...]
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