All teas can be processed by hand or by machine and all teas are graded by size of the leaf. They can be scented or flavored, and only a small proportion of them are. Most often, oolong or black teas are so treated. Blossoms, petals, or pieces of fruit can be added to flavor teas as can the addition of commercial essences, oils, or fragrances. Flavors such as jasmine, rose, litchi, orange, and orchid are popular, in that order. It is common practice, that when essences or oils are used that a large piece of cotton be saturated with same and put in a big box of tea leaves and left there for hours or days, depending upon the depth of aroma desired.
Everyone should know that teabags and compressed teas are neither new nor an American invention. Tea used to be compressed in large blocks or rounded shapes. For shipping, they were packed in bamboo then further protected by a wooden chest or a leather bag for their long journeys. Sometimes these bags got wet. The caravan stewards saw infused tea leaking from them and more than one of them thought of making a batch of tea in that manner in a bag of one sort or another.
When I was a child listening to Arthur Godfrey extolling the virtues of Lipton Tea in easy to use bags filled with 'pekoe and orange pekoe' tea, I saw bits of orange and thought him selling the highest quality tea known to man. My imagination wandered because I heard 'orange pekoe.' However, those words mean long leaves; 'pekoe' alone means shorter leaves. Other tea leaf words for their sizes include: 'souchong' meaning coarse leaves, and 'fannings' and 'dust' as words for the left-overs of any of the above.
The above terms do not connotate flavor, rather they speak of tea leaf size, and therefore quality. Tea bags, flow-through or otherwise, can be and usually are mixtures of fannings and dust and perhaps some other known tea leaves ground small. They rarely, if ever, have small spring-picked leaves so beloved by the Chinese.
I have since learned that flow-thorough tea bags do brew better tea than flat tea bags because there is more room for leaf expansion. Both beg the question, however, of how to handle the teabag, and extract the best of the brew. At a recent food show, I learned that the Tetley company with offices in Shelton, Connecticut, has one way to solve that problem. They now make a drawstring tea bag.
Except for seeing that at that show, this English import is not yet on supermarket shelves. T-sac Produktions, of Hannover, Germany, also has a neat solution. Theirs is for those that want to use their own fine tea leaves and bag them; they, too, are not readily available in the United States; but becoming more so.
By Explore Cultural China
Everyone should know that teabags and compressed teas are neither new nor an American invention. Tea used to be compressed in large blocks or rounded shapes. For shipping, they were packed in bamboo then further protected by a wooden chest or a leather bag for their long journeys. Sometimes these bags got wet. The caravan stewards saw infused tea leaking from them and more than one of them thought of making a batch of tea in that manner in a bag of one sort or another.
When I was a child listening to Arthur Godfrey extolling the virtues of Lipton Tea in easy to use bags filled with 'pekoe and orange pekoe' tea, I saw bits of orange and thought him selling the highest quality tea known to man. My imagination wandered because I heard 'orange pekoe.' However, those words mean long leaves; 'pekoe' alone means shorter leaves. Other tea leaf words for their sizes include: 'souchong' meaning coarse leaves, and 'fannings' and 'dust' as words for the left-overs of any of the above.
The above terms do not connotate flavor, rather they speak of tea leaf size, and therefore quality. Tea bags, flow-through or otherwise, can be and usually are mixtures of fannings and dust and perhaps some other known tea leaves ground small. They rarely, if ever, have small spring-picked leaves so beloved by the Chinese.
I have since learned that flow-thorough tea bags do brew better tea than flat tea bags because there is more room for leaf expansion. Both beg the question, however, of how to handle the teabag, and extract the best of the brew. At a recent food show, I learned that the Tetley company with offices in Shelton, Connecticut, has one way to solve that problem. They now make a drawstring tea bag.
Except for seeing that at that show, this English import is not yet on supermarket shelves. T-sac Produktions, of Hannover, Germany, also has a neat solution. Theirs is for those that want to use their own fine tea leaves and bag them; they, too, are not readily available in the United States; but becoming more so.
By Explore Cultural China
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