Tea is nearly 5,000 years old. Legend has it that tea was discovered quite by accident by the Chinese Emperor Shen Nung in 2737 B.C. Apparently, he was relaxing in the garden with a cup of boiling water, and some leaves from a nearby tree fell into the cup unnoticed The emperor loved the drink and declared that tea gave one "vigor of body, contentment of mind and determination of purpose."
As a testament to the emperor?s assessment, tea is the second most popular beverage in the world. It is second only to water in worldwide consumption.
Although worldwide people prefer hot tea, 85% of the tea consumed in the United States is served over ice. Iced tea was surprisingly not discovered until the twentieth century. Richard Blechynden, an American tea plantation owner, invented Iced Tea at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. That year, there was a scortching heat wave and no one wanted to sample his hot tea. Mr. Blechynden therefore dumped a load of ice into his tea and served the first Iced Tea. As any American would suspect, Iced Tea was the hit of the fair!
Tea comes in three different varieties, black green and oolong. The three types of tea, green, black and oolong, come from the same tea plant, the Camellia sinensis, a white flowered evergreen. The differences between these teas results from differing methods of processing the leaves. Different varieties of Camellia sinesis grow in different geographic areas and produce leaves that vary from a very small China leaf, perhaps one-half to three-quarters of an inch long, to the Assam leaf, which may be 3 or 4 inches long. Certain varieties are better suited than others for a particular process method. Thus, for example, a China leaf produces great oolongs.
So, what is orange pekoe? This referes to the size of the tea leaf. Processed tea leaves are sorted into sizes by passing them over screens with different size holes. The larges leaves are orange pekoe, pekoe and pekoe souchong. The smaller or broker leaves are classified as broken orange pekoe, broken pekoe souchong, broken orange pekoe fannings, and fines (also called "dust").
When brewing tea, flavor and color come out of larger leaves more slowly than out of broken and fine grades. The broken grades, which comprise approximately 80% of the total black tea crop, produce a stronger, darker tea. The grades have nothing to do with the quality or flavor of tea; they simply refer to leaf size.
Approximately 95 percent of all tea consumed in the United States is black; 4 percent is green and 1 percent oolong.
All this tea consumption requires a lot of tea. The United States is the world's second largest tea importing nation, purchasing over 100 million tons of tea each year from all over the world. The original tea gardens were located in the monsoon districts of Southeast Asia but tea is now farmed worldwide.
Tea & Your Health
Everyone has heard that tea is healthy and there is a lot of truth in that. Science has confirmed what has been suspected for centuries: tea is good for you! Want to learn more? Read on....
- USA Weekend Edition, November 18, 2001 says that tea may be the "Most Potent Health Drink Ever." In fact, USA reports that "[r]ecent studies in leading medical journals declare tea a potential heart tonic, cancer blocker, fat buster, immune stimulant, arthritis soother, virus fighter and cholesterol detoxifier. To read the entire text of this informative article, click here.
- Dr. Weil, Drink More Tea, May 23, 2003, explains that the "[r]esults of a Chinese study published in the May 2002 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine showed that men and women who are long-time tea drinkers . . . seem to have an advantage in terms of bone mineral density." Dr. Weil also cites a study from Harvard Medical School, which "showed that tea drinkers among heart attack patients might survive longer than those who drink something else."
- Dr. Weil, Black tea deters cavity causing plaque, December 11, 2003, points out that a study from the University of Illinois College of Dentistry has "shown that compounds in black tea can destroy or suppress growth and acid production of cavity-causing bacteria in dental plaque."
- Forbes.com, Tea Reduces Ovarian Cancer Risk, December 12, 2005, explains that "women who drink at least two cups of tea a day can reduce their risk of developing ovarian cancer by almost 50 percent."
Links to Websites with information about Tea & Your Health:
TeaHealth.co.uk is the world's largest resource for information on tea and your health.
TeaUSA.com is the official site of the Tea Association of the United States.