Tea or Tisane?

Do you know if you’re drinking tea or tisane? All “Tea” comes from one plant, the Camellia Sinensis plant, commonly referred as Camellia. These Camellia Sinensis tea plant are native to South East Asia; medium sized warm-weather evergreen bushes that average 4 – 6 feet in height. Therefore any other drink made from any other source is Tisane: a herbal infusion made with herbs, roots, spices, flowers or other parts of other plant other then camellia.

There are six pure teas made from the camellia plant:

1.      White tea

2.      Green tea

3.      Pu-erh tea or Bolay tea

4.      Black tea

5.      Oolong tea

6.      Kukicha tea or Bōcha (twig tea)

Don’t become subject to Bitter Tea Face! Keep this in mind when looking for a quality tea; tea is perishable as any natural plant or animal by-product. Just like coffee and cigars, it will be ruined by oxidizing in the air. Equally, your tea will only be as good as the water you use. So make sure you’re not using stale tea or low-quality tap water. Your supplier should be able to guarantee the freshness of their tea; you’re then responsible for brewing your tea in a clean sanitized pot for 3 – 5 minutes with high quality water.

The Down & Dirty of Tea Health Benefits:

As you may be aware, tea has high concentrations of Polyphenols. What you may not be aware of is that our power house tea is ranked higher then many fruits on the Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) analysis! This analysis measures antioxidant levels in food. The stronger or higher antioxidant strength, the better ability the antioxidants eliminate oxygen free radicals. This helps our body’s fight diseases and cancer! There are countless studies telling us of all the benefits of antioxidants from age preservation, building immune systems to their anti-cancer benefits and more. So if you’re looking for a great resource for natural antioxidants, tea is your new best friend!

How do we get six kinds of tea from one plant? Processing.

Different processing times and methods will provide different levels of oxidation. The more processing a tea leaf goes through, the darker they will turn, however they still contain polyphenols (antioxidant).

• White tea: made from young silvery white leaves that don’t yet contain chlorophyll.
• Green tea: freshly harvested leafs that are quickly steamed and packaged.
• Pu-erh tea or Bolay tea: large tea leaves compressed into tea cakes or bricks.
• Black tea: oxidized longer then all other tea for maximum for strong flavor.
• Oolong tea: semi-oxidized tea some ware between green tea and black tea.
• Kukicha tea or Bōcha tea (twig tea): a blend of green tea stems stalks and twigs.

Sources of information: http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/ar/archive/sep03/tea0903.htm

http://teaassociation.org/  Tea Board of India  Sri Lanka Tea Board   Asosiasi Teh Indonesia  Tea Board of Kenya  Bangladesh Tea Board  Tea Board of Tanzania  United Kingdom Tea Council  Tea Association of the USA  Tea Association of Canada  Netherlands Coffee Roasters & Tea Packers' Association  OCIR THE (Rwanda Tea Authority)  Vietnam Tea Association  Japan Tea Association  China Tea Marketing Association  World Green Tea Association  Japan Tea Central Association  Associazone Italiana Degustatori e Maestri di The  Russian Association of Tea & Coffee

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