All “real” teas come from the same species of plant:  Camellia sinensis.  What makes each tea unique includes the plant variety, where and how it is grown, when the leaves, buds, or stems are harvested, and how the harvested tea is cultivated.  In green tea, the leaves are dried almost immediately to prevent aging (typically the leaf is allowed to wilt first).  Traditional drying methods are steaming or dry pan-frying.  This preserves the leaf’s flavor, as well as its health-promoting properties, such as its chlorophyll, its tannins, its amino acids, and it antioxidants (called catechins) which compose about 30% of a leaf’s dry weight. White teas are similarly processed, using tender buds and leaves which are dried without wilting.  Yellow teas are processed like green tea but are dried more slowly, so the leaf yellows a bit.

By contrast, black teas are made by allowing the leaf to age until oxidation is complete, destroying the chlorophyll (rendering the leaf black in color), releasing its tannins and converting amino acids to aromatic aldehydes. (In the tea trade, they call this oxidation process fermentation, although microorganisms are not typically involved, as in true fermentation.) Why age tea if it reduces its health benefits?  Well, here’s one reason:  fully oxidizing tea leaves renders their flavor stable for several years. In fact, for many centuries compressed blocks of black tea were used as currency in many areas of Asia.  Still, for our purposes today, we choose to offer you our current favorite green,  white and oolong teas, for their flavor and body-balancing properties.  We rotate our stock to ensure freshness and variety.

Oolong tea is a “semi-oxidized” tea, somewhere between green and black tea.  The varieties we offer are lightly oxidized, leaning more towards the green teas than the black teas.

Twig tea, also called Kukicha, Bancha, or winter tea, is made from the stems and twigs of the tea plant, typically collected when the tea plant is pruned in winter while the plant is dormant.  Twig tea is high in antioxidants and very low in caffeine.  It also is rich in tannins and is purported to support neutralizing the body’s acid levels.

Red tea is made from the leaves and stems of the Aspalathus linearis plant, commonly known as “rooibos” or “red bush”, and which grows in a particular region of South Africa. Red tea is caffeine-free and also is high in antioxidants and other body-balancing and health-promoting compounds.  Like tea leaves, rooibos leaves can either be allowed to age to full oxidation (traditional red tea) or dried without oxidation (“green” rooibos).

Flowering teas or blooming teas, are made by bundling green tea leaves and flowers together and binding them with a cotton thread to form a ball. When steeped, the bundle expands and unfurls in a process that emulates a blooming flower  Flowers commonly used in flowering teas include globe amaranth, chrysanthemum, jasmine, lily, hibiscus, and osmanthus.