After not drinking caffeine for over 12 years I started drinking tea 2 years ago, and I thought it might be helpful to share what I have discovered thus far.

Tea (Camellia sinensis) is an evergreen bush native to East Asia (according to Wikipedia), although there are some other plants and herbs that people drink as herbal tea, but these will not be the focus of this post.

Tea comes in a bewildering number of styles and varieties, as well as competing ideas on preparation.

Choosing a tea to drink, is therefore, a journey on its own.

Breaking tea into categories helps find the ideal tea (if this was a wine discussion, we’d start by asking, red or white, still or sparkling, and so on).

The first categorisation of tea types, is the style in which it has been processed. That is, tea leaves are picked, then processed in some way that brings out the flavour in one way or another, within those styles are sub-styles, from there there are plant varieties, then people look at the region, or farm that the tea originates from. It’s fair to say that choosing tea is a lot like choosing a wine.

The styles of tea are, oddly enough, known by the colour of the leaves before they are brewed.

You may be familiar with Green tea, or Black tea, but there are far more ‘colours to be aware of’. There is, in order of process level, White, Green, Blue, Red (Westerners know this as Black), and Black.

White tea is really pale Yellow in appearance, just to keep you on your toes! This is the most raw form of tea, the leaves aren’t processed (other than drying) and has a very light flavour.

Green tea is most familiar to Westerners as Japanese teas, although its history and usage stretches much farther into China. Within Green teas the Japanese have two categories, Sencha (whole leaves), and Matcha (powdered leaves). It’s what I started drinking when I started drinking tea again. The cleansing flavour and low caffeine percentage appealed to me.

Blue tea (also known as Oolong) is a partially oxidised tea, there are a large number of styles and varieties within the category, which seem to be mostly from China (Fujian province) or Taiwan. How much oxidisation has taken place with the leaf is a matter of preference of the locality of the producer. People tend to rate TiKuan Yi (aka The Iron Goddess) as the best Oolong, but I like Golden Oosmanthus and Narcissus varieties.

Red tea (what we in the West know as black tea) is darker than Oolong, but has a stronger tannin taste, I’m not a fan of it.

Black tea (Pu’erh) comes in two styles, Ripe, or Unripe. Unripe tastes a lot like Oolong to me, and is not something I buy. Ripe Pu’erh (also known as Shou), is my preferred tea now.

Preparation, broadly speaking the Eastern method of preparing tea is to take a few grams of tea leaf, infuse it in water for 30(ish) seconds, and drink. The tea leaves are reused for several cups of tea. The Western style is to steep tea in water for several minutes, and to discard the leaves after a single use.

I, perhaps oddly, prefer the Western method for my morning Oolong. I have a dark oolong that I brew in a 700 ml teapot for several minutes before drinking. My Pu’erh, though, is brewed in the Eastern style, a small tea strainer is half filled with dried Pu’erh, and is steeped for 30 seconds in a cup (the leaves swell, so any more than half full means that the leaves try to push the strainer open and end up in the cup).