Author: Lani and Norm

Darjeeling tea is tea from this district in West Bengal India called the Darjeeling district. This area is in the Himalayas. It’s tea grown here. The soil and climate is such that the teas created here have an taste that gives it the distinction of being referred to as the “champagne of teas”. The flavour of Darjeeling teas go well with custard, eggs, grilled fish, curries and fresh fruit. So pretty much everything! There are 87 tea gardens, as they are called, places that grow tea in this area. These tea estates cover over 17500hectares of land and produce over 9 million kilograms of tea per year and employ over 50 percent of the people in this Darjeeling district.

It seems that originally matcha was very precious and produced in small quantities so that only nobility and shogun were able to drink it. However, in 1738 someone names Sohen Nagatani invented the uji green tea processing method. Another blog article, perhaps? This allowed for a more efficient process to create matcha. Now it was readily accessible to the general population and more people starting consuming matcha. Prior to this the general population would drink a drink called Bancha (Houjicha) which was brown in colour and much more bitter.

What does it mean for a tea to be white?  Aren’t they all some shade of brown, darker or lighter?  It seems that white tea […]

ome teas do indeed have caffeine but how much compared to your average cup of coffee? There are studies that have said that tea leaves contain more caffeine than coffee beans. That doesn’t sound good. But there are some benefits to caffeine in small doses. Teas that do not have caffeine shouldn’t be confused with decaffeinated teas. A decaffeinated tea is a tea that had caffeine in it originally but the caffeine has been removed.

Black tea comes from the camellia sinensis plant as we have established, but it has been oxidized the longest. This gives it it’s stronger flavour. The camellia sinensis var. assamica variety of the plant is the variety that is normally used to produce black teas because of it’s large leaves. Different countries refer to black tea in different ways. In China it is referred to as the “red tea”; in japan and korea as hongcha; in Bengali as Lal cha, all these names refer to the colour of the liquid that results from steeping the tea leaves. In the west it is called “black tea” which refers to the colour of the oxidized leaves. Black teas retain its flavour for several years, unlike green teas which are oxidized less. Common black teas are English Breakfast and Earl Grey blends.