Green Tea

Green tea is most common in China. As with all other varieties of tea, green tea also comes from the plant Camellia Sinesis. Although black tea has been the most popular variety of tea in the West, recently green tea has been spreading in popularity.

Green tea consumption started in China almost 5,000 years ago and it is used for such things as healing wounds, stopping bleedings and regulating body temperature. The same is done in Japan, Thailand and India.

Green tea is now being acredited with providing many health benefits. There is already hard evidence that shows green tea helps reduce the risk of certain cancers and lowers cholesterol levels.

Black Tea

Black tea is one of the four main varieties of tea that exist today. The other three varieties are green tea, oolong tea and white tea. Black tea, as well as the rest of the varieties of tea, come from the plant Camellia Sinesis and one characteristic that distinguishes it from the rest of teas is its strong flavor. Black tea is known to retain its flavor for many years, while others will usually hold it for no more than two years. Black tea makes about 90% of the tea sold in the west.

Black tea is classified into four different grades: whole leaf, broken leaf, fannings and dust.

Tea is said to have began as a medicine and grew into an everyday beverage. While tea entered the realm of poetry as one of the polite amusements in China, the fifteenth century saw Japan turn tea into a religion of aestheticism. This religion, known as Teaism, and introduced by Okakura Kakuzo, author of “The Book of Tea.”

Okakura

In Japanese culture, Teaism has been highly favored by the isolation of Japan from other cultures. Tea is a part of many Japanese habits, customs and cuisines. Anyone studying Japanese culture will notice the importance of tea as it is also in the literature and paintings.

Japanese Teahouse

Okakura describes Teaism as “a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.