a Brief Overview

Any real tea that you will encounter, though it may seem different from all its siblings, is from the same tree: Camillia sinensis. The most common kind of tea in the US is black tea, although that may be changing, so I’ll start with that.

All teas have wonderful antioxidents that will absorb free radicals…and if you don’t know what that means, suffice it to say that it’s very good for you. Many consider that drinking a (small) pot of green tea every day is enough to keep you pretty healthy, although the antioxidents found in green tea are not unique to it (you’ll get the same with black, oolong, & white). If you’re planning on making iced tea, make it in hot water a bit stronger than you would otherwise and then pour it over ice. Alternately, you can set a clear (preferably glass) container in the sun with tea bags (the only use I’ve found for them…) for as long as the sun stays in that spot. This can go into the fridge for future cold tea. My mom called this “sun tea” but I’ve also heard “sunshine tea”.

From these four kinds come every “tea” imaginable. Earl Grey, my favorite, is black tea flavored with bergamot. Macha, the tea used in Japanese tea ceremonies, is pulverized green tea. There are Darjeelings, which are black teas from Darjeeling (in India), and have a more mild taste. Assams, which are also black teas from India, are very strong and slightly bitter. Orange Pekoe is black tea picked early in the season and is very mild. Gunpowder tea is green tea that has been hand rolled into little balls, like gunpowder. These open up to full leaves when steeped. Moroccan tea is gunpowder tea with mint.

That we can get so many kinds of tea from the same plant occasionally boggles my mind. It also makes me wonder what tea would taste like if we took it from a different kind of camillia plant (there are many varieties). No one knows just how tea was “invented” or discovered, but there are many myths surrounding it. My favorite is that Getafix discovered it during a trip to Asia and Asterix introduced it to the British tribe fighting the Romans, who later adopted it as their national drink (substituting it for what was previously their national drink, hot water).

Rooibos (say roy-boos), a bush native to Africa (Aspalathus linearis), is often referred to as “red tea”, but since it isn’t Camillia sinensis, it’s not technically “tea”. Rather, it is a tisane (which, when I told my roommate, she asked “what the “hizell a tisane” was), which is an infusion in hot water. Tea is properly a tisane of tea, just like red tea is a tisane of rooibos. Rooibos is completely caffeine free and tastes very little like “tea”. It has its own flavor (as one might expect), which is light and slightly earthy. When I was in Zimbabwe, we had rooibos every morning with honey & lemon tea cookies. That was how I learned tea could be sweetened not just with sugar! It really is good piping hot with a spot of honey. A few years after I got back, I found it at Trader Joe’s! Which is awesome. The store that sells to TJ’s is in Hollywood and I now buy it in bulk there. Rooibos should be steeped for at least 5 minutes for full flavor in hot water.

Yerba Mate (say yerba-mah-tay) is a tisane very popular in South America( Ilex paraguariensis), where it is drunk communally from the same gourd (and straw) one cup at a time (which is to say, one person will drink a whole gourd of it and then pass the gourd to the next person). My sister brought me back some and I think it tastes like dirt, but it’s insanely good for you. If I ever feel a cold coming on, I drink a pot of it & go right to sleep. I wake up with nary a tickle, it’s awesome. Yerba mate should never be steeped in hot water. It should be a warmish kind of water, about the temperature that you would comfortably drink it at. The way I get around this is, when I make a pot, I fill it half full with cold or room-temperature water. I put the tea in and let it steep while I boil water. The boiling water goes in on top of the water that’s already been steeping for a while. It can be drunk after about 5 minutes.

The legend about yerba mate is that a village had used all the fertile land around it, so had to move. One man, however, was too old & infirm to move with the village, so he stayed behind, as did his daughter. The gods (not sure which ones) were impressed with her fidelity to her father that they appeared to her & offered to grant her one wish. Her wish was that her father was able to travel, so that she could be with her betrothed, who moved with the village. Even more impressed, the gods gave her yerba mate & taught her how to cultivate it & harvest it. It gave her father the strength to travel to the new village and made her keep her youth. I have read that yerba mate contains just as much caffeine as coffee, but I have never found that to be the case (sleeping after a pot…?), but it is often marketed as a substitute for coffee for that reason. It, too, can be found at Trader Joe’s and most “alternative” grocery stores (including Whole Foods/Wild Oats).

Now we come to herbal teas. As discussed above, these are properly herbal tisanes, but it’s a distinction I’ve only come to realize after years of being a tea freak. Essentially, any herb can be tossed into hot water for 5 minutes and called herbal tea. The most common one is mint, but chamomile runs a close second. Any “fruit” tea, like from Celestial Seasonings” is an herbal tea of some kind. A popular herbal tea in Germany is “Hagebutten”, which is Hybiscus & is often found combined with rose hips. It’s blood red and delicious! Also, distressingly healthy.

In my mind, all teas should be enjoyed in full leaf. But since I don’t like picking the leaves out of my teeth, I keep a strainer in the pot. I rarely remove the leaves once I start drinking it (I don’t have white tea that often) and then empty the strainer down the disposal. The common british way of making tea is to use a strainer that fits over a cup, this also keeps one from having to chew the last few cups. Japanese green tea is often pulverized so can be left unstrained. If I still had a garden, I would put them there, plants love used tea, it can be put right into the soil without composting first. It also makes great compost material because it’s usually put in wet and a little wet goes a long way with compost.

Tea bags contain pieces of tea leaves and I have found (after years of thinking people who thought this way were crazy) that virtually all teas of a color taste the same from a bag. Where possible, tea should be made with filtered water.

But I’ll get into the nitty-gritty of all that in another post.