Tea 101: A guide to types of tea and how to brew them

Join the growing number of Americans who are embracing tea

The Chinese have prized tea for its medicinal qualities as far back as 1046 BCE. The British have imbibed it as an afternoon ritual since the mid-seventeenth century. In Japan, an entire culture has evolved around the ceremony of preparing and drinking tea. So, what is it about this simple beverage that so enchants and soothes the soul?

“Tea is comforting because it is balanced,” explains Steve Lorch, who owns Table Rock Tea Company with his wife, Jennifer. “Chemical components in the plant mitigate the way it’s delivered so you get more of a calm alertness [versus] the spike that you get with coffee.”

Through the centuries, the drink brewed from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant has gained global popularity. Today, tea is the world’s second most-consumed beverage, after water (coffee is a distant third).

Types of Tea

The four main types of tea—black, green, oolong, and white—all come from the Camilla sinensis plant. “The type of tea depends on what you pick and how you process it,” says Lorch.

He should know. The couple’s 12.5 acres at the foot of Table Rock Mountain in Pickens is blanketed with some 50,000 tea plants from which they hand-harvest tea leaves and process them on-site. Whether you end up with green or black tea depends on the oxidation of the leaves.

“If you want green tea, you wither the leaves and then bake them and dry them, and it’s set,” Lorch says. “For black tea, you wither it, then take those leaves and beat them up. We put them into big rolling machines, which break up the leaves . . . . At that point, the tea starts to turn black, and the longer you let that oxidation process go, the blacker the tea becomes.” Processing black tea takes about 18 hours, while green tea requires only six.

Although there’s a whole science around what water temperature is best for brewing what type of tea, Lorch recommends a general rule, whether you’re using teabags or loose tea leaves: boil the water, then turn it off and let it come down to 180 degrees or so. And don’t steep tea more than three minutes, or it becomes bitter. “Tea is a matter of geometry,” he says. “It has to do with particles touching the water.”

“Tea tempers the spirit, harmonizes the mind, dispels lassitude and relieves fatigue,” stated Tang dynasty writer Lu Yu in The Classic of Tea. It seems he was onto something. No matter how you make it, there’s a profoundly peaceful quality about sipping a cup of hot tea on a chilly fall day, as if you’re being steeped in comfort.