I don’t drink coffee.
Which means that I drink tea. A lot of tea.
Morning (caffeinated) … afternoon (semi-caffeinated) … evening (herbal). My day is punctuated by one cup of tea after another. I enjoy picking out the flavor each time, matching it to my mood and whatever’s going on at the moment—whether I need to ramp up my nervous system, or calm it down.
With all that tea drinking, you can guess at the size of my stash. Here’s a peek inside my tea cupboard. (And this is only the front row, the ones I reach for the most often. There are just as many boxes behind this row, including jars of loose tea leaves.)
I’m also interested in how tea is grown and made. The world of different varieties fascinates me. This ancient beverage is truly a global refreshment: It has been enjoyed across centuries, continents and cultures. My personal collection includes gifts from far-traveling friends who brought me tea from Britain, Paraguay, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.
Years ago, on a family trip to Colorado, I dragged my husband and kids through a tour of the Celestial Seasonings factory. The highlight of the tour was a room where they stored all the dried peppermint, floor to ceiling. It had to be in a separate room because the odor was so overpowering, it would contaminate other herbs. The memory is still pungent: You walked into that mint room and you got your sinuses cleared, pronto.
A couple of Sundays ago, I went on another tea tour. This one was closer to home. In fact, right down the road from where I live. What a find! Table Rock Tea Company is a homegrown tea farm in the most unlikely of locations—the South Carolina mountains.
You probably know that most tea is grown in warm climates of Asia and Africa. It’s not a cold-weather crop. That’s why the United States produces less than one percent of the world’s harvest of tea. When I heard there was an honest-to-goodness tea farm in my neighborhood, one of the few in America, well of course I had to check it out.
A young couple named Steve and Jennifer Lorch are the owners of Table Rock Tea. They learned how to grow tea while in Kenya years ago. Now they tend 30 acres and 30,000 tea plants. If you visit their farm, you’ll learn a bushel of facts about the cultivation and processing of tea. Those facts come at you hard and fast during Jennifer’s high-energy presentation. I thought I knew a good bit about tea, but … wow … as Jennifer led us on a tour of the farm, I was scribbling as fast as I could, trying to record the stats that rolled off her tongue.
Here are a few nuggets I gleaned during that hour of Tea 101.
All “true” tea (non-herbal) is made from one plant: Camellia sinensis. The different methods of processing the tea leaves is what produces all the unique varieties. (More on that in a minute.)
Other native plants used to make “tea” that contains caffeine are yaupon holly (North America) and yerba mate (South America).
The seed of Camellia sinensis is surprisingly large, almost the size of a walnut.
Camellia sinensis plants aren’t ready to go in the ground until the seedlings have matured in a greenhouse for a year or so. Once they’re planted outdoors, it’ll be another 5 to 7 years before they’re ready for harvesting. But then they make up for all that waiting: They continue to produce for 50 to 80 years. That’s what I call a long-lived plant!
Tea basically has two seasons in a temperate climate: November through April (when it’s dormant, though evergreen) and May through October (when it’s actively growing and is harvested). In hotter, more arid climates such as Africa, the plant produces year-round.
Some big tea plantations use machinery for harvesting. At Table Rock Tea, volunteers and teenage employees pick the leaves by hand, working under the summer sun with burlap bags strapped to their backs.
Only the top two new leaves and bud are harvested from each stem on a plant. (The older leaves have a bitter flavor.) From one waist-high plant, you can make about 50 cups of tea. Another way to put it: Five pounds of fresh leaves make one pound of dried tea.
There are three steps to processing fresh tea leaves: withering, dehydration, and oxidation. The caffeine level is determined during the oxidation phase, which involves rolling, crushing, and bruising the dried leaves to expose them to air. Green tea isn’t oxidated at all, so it has the least caffeine. Oolong tea, which is oxidated for 10 minutes, has a medium level of caffeine. Black tea, which is oxidated for 30 minutes, has the highest amount of caffeine.
If a box of tea says it’s “caffeine free,” that means it was made from an infusion of herbs, not Camellia sinensis. If the box says “decaffeinated,” that means chemicals were used to extract the caffeine from tea that was made from Camellia sinensis.
You can naturally decaffeinate any tea: Brew a cup of tea for 20 seconds, then pour off the liquid and pour new hot water over the tea bag. You got rid of eighty percent of the caffeine by that simple procedure.
Matcha, a popular variety of tea, isn’t really a unique variety. It’s dried tea leaves that were finely ground into powder. In fact, the word matcha in Japanese is a verb that means “to grind tea.” It’s more nutritious than regular tea because you’re ingesting the whole leaf. Though matcha is most commonly made from green tea leaves, you can “matcha” any variety of tea by grinding it into a powder that you then whisk into boiling water.
Okay, tea lovers, that concludes today’s tour. I hope you enjoyed our journey through the world of tea growing and making. Now it’s time for a cuppa!
Jeanne this was very enlightening. I learned a lot! Thank you!!
I drink tea daily in a way that is somewhat similar to you. I have tinnitus or constant noise near my ears. It can be aggravated or made louder by caffeine. Thus, I avoid coffee, most over the counter meds and even too much chocolate. My mornings start with a black and green tea combination made by Tetley that I actually like! I can handle 2 cups of it. Later I have one or 2 cups of any of a variety of herb teas. Like stinging nettle which sooth any achy parts of my bod rather quickly. Like as I am drinking it! Or dandelion root tea with a little bit of sugar that makes a nice change. I also find elderflower soothing.
I will be trying some of the Cold-Harvest Green Tea with sage and natural oil of apricot from your neighbors! Nice easy to use website! 😃
Wow! Not only is your article enlightening so is Sandy’s comment. I too suffer from tinnitus and had no idea caffeine makes it worse. I drink Tazos organic awake English tea every morning. I also eat dark chocolate at lunch. I’m going to experiment with eliminating caffeine or at least cutting back. Thanks to both of you.