A cup of Tea or Tisane?

With the days getting shorter and the nights getting cooler that bring one thing to mind….Hot Tea!  Now don’t get me wrong I love iced Tea, but a good cup of hot tea to warm you up is hard to beat.  Put the tea kettle on,  get a cup, add some loose leaf tea, steep then enjoy.?

Did you know that there are many varieties of tea? To be a tea, it must come from the Camellia Sinensis plant.  There are several varieties of this plant, producing many types of teas.  Types depend on the manufacturing and crafting of the leaf.  The flavor profiles and quality change year to year, like wine, and is infuluenced by soil, temperature, rainfall, elevation and other elements in nature.

 Oxidation is a term used to describe the browning that takes place when a leaf is crushed. This chemical reaction is what turns a tea into a white, green, oolong or black tea.

The oxidation process is halted using a variety of methods. In Japan, the tea leaves are steamed and dried. In China the leaves are stir-fried in woks or dryers. Sometimes the leaves are smoked over burning pine needles. In India, the leaves are placed in big dyers and tumbled dry.

Camellia sinensis prefers cool, rainy weather and medium to high elevations. Tea cultivators harvest only new buds and leaves during the picking season, and then dry and roast the tea. Depending on when the tea is dried, the leaves ferment to different levels, creating different flavors. Non-fermented leaves are used to make white tea, a very mild beverage, while green tea is more heavily fermented. Oolong and black tea are much more fermented, bringing out the sharp tannins in the leaves.

Once the tea has been roasted, it can be packaged for sale, or blended with other ingredients. The tea is brewed by pouring water over the dried ingredients; the less fermented the tea, the cooler the water needs to be, and the shorter the steeping time. Depending on the culture, tea may be consumed plain, or served with a variety of ingredients such as milk, cream, honey, sugar, or lemon.

Because tea is such a familiar beverage around the world, the term “tea” is sometimes used to refer to herbal tisanes such as rooibos, and blends of flowers, roots, leaves, and stems from other plants. Technically, such beverages are tisanes or infusions, not teas. In addition to lacking Camellia sinensis, they are also handled very differently from true teas, and they have a markedly different flavor and chemical composition. Tea, for example, contains caffeine, while herbal infusions do not.

Happy Steeping,

Bonnie