It's All About Tea — tea processing

In China, fermentation is a vital part of the food culture. Sauces and condiments, tofu, pickles, wine, and even nuts. You will find at least one fermented ingredient on every dinner table in China. It is no wonder that fermentation made its way into China's extensive and well-developed tea culture. (Read more)

Tea brews can have so many beautiful color schemes: oak brown, amber orange, jade green, honey yellow… and the list goes on. 

As we’ve already learned, the color of the tea doesn’t always correspond with the tea category. In the West, we are mostly used to ordering a black tea and receiving a dark brown, almost black tea brew. When it comes to Chinese black teas (red teas), the color of the brew can vary from a darkish umber brown to a light golden liquid. 

So what are some of the things that influence the resulting color of the tea brew? (Read more)

Chinese black tea – Hong Cha (红茶) – is one of the world's most widely produced teas, but it has a different name, a different history, and a fundamentally different character from the black teas most Westerners know. For centuries, Chinese farmers produced hong cha almost exclusively for export. It wasn't until 2005, when Jin Jun Mei sparked a domestic tea renaissance, that Chinese black tea became a tea for Chinese people, too. This is a guide to its history, its types, and what makes it worth drinking.  (Read more)

White tea doesn't look like much. The leaves are barely touched during processing, often just a pale scattering of downy buds with a light silvery fuzz. So it tends to surprise people that a tea this understated can carry such a high price tag, with certain harvests and aged batches selling for as much as, or even more than, far more elaborately processed teas.

While some don't understand the price tag on this tea, others patiently await the new harvest season, or even for it to reach its peak aging period. (Read more)

One of the things that makes Wuyi Rock Tea different from other oolongs is the roasting process it undergoes. This process is not only one step, but a few distinguished steps.

When yancha is only in the first stages of processing, it's still quite vegetal and floral, much like a green tea. Only at the end of processing will it gain the characteristic taste we all love. (Read more)