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Tea — hot or cold, black, white or green — we love it
Saturday, January 26, 2008
the world's inhabitants drink more tea than any other beverage — well, not counting water. And now there's a growing body of research to suggest that the tea all of those folks are drinking might just have a health benefit or two. The folks who grow and market tea are quite happy about both those facts, as you might imagine.
And even though tea can be disarmingly simple — heat water, pour over teabag, drink — the more a tea drinker scratches the surface of this ubiquitous beverage, the more complex, complicated and mysterious it can become.
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We turned to the Tea Association of the USA and some local purveyors for some help in exploring and demystifying a beverage that crosses so many centuries and cultures.
The first thing tea enthusiasts are quick to point out: All "real" tea — whether it's labeled white tea, green, oolong or black — comes from the same tea plant, a warm-weather evergreen named Camellia Sinensis. The differences between the different types of tea lie in how the fresh leaves of the plant are processed.
Herbal teas, on the other hand, can be virtually any infusion of leaves, roots, bark, seeds or flowers of other plants. They don't have to contain any "real" tea — a fact that tea purists find just a tad bit aggravating.
Now, those same purists have to sit and watch as their "real" tea is adulterated with all manner of ingredients, resulting in products such as Pomegranate Lychee Green Tea and Vanilla Caramel Truffle Tea. And yes, there's even Green Tea Liqueur.
The tea producers, though, are smiling all the way to the bank: 2006 was the 15th consecutive year that consumer purchases of tea increased. Retail supermarket sales alone surpassed the $1.9 billion mark, fueled in part by a surge in convenient ready-to-drink forms of tea in bottles.
Calvin Mayne, whose family owns Dorothy Lane Markets, has witnessed the surge from up close. DLM's largest store, in Springboro, now devotes 30 feet of shelf space to teas, Mayne said, and ready-to-drink teas are selling briskly.
Formerly a coffee-only drinker, Mayne credits his own tea epiphany in part to a trip four years ago to a tea shop in San Francisco's Chinatown, where he tasted teas and talked for hours with the shop's proprietor. Since then, his appreciation has grown for tea in the same way others gain appreciation for fine wines or chocolates, Mayne said.
Don Dean, owner of the Vandalia-based Boston Stoker chain of nine coffee and tea shops in the Dayton area, said customers who bought loose tea for brewing was a relative rarity only a few years ago, and tea had just a handful of flavorings such as cinnamon or orange. Now, his biggest seller is a $32-per-pound Jasmine Pearl tea that infuses jasmine flowers into green tea leaves rolled into tiny balls that unfurl as they flavor heated water.
"In the past few years, there's been a tea awakening, and it's just going to get bigger," Dean said.
Publicity over possible health benefits seems to be driving the tea surge. Research has suggested tea consumption may lower the risk of heart disease and some types of cancers. Tea contains flavonoids, naturally occurring compounds that are believed to have antioxidant properties. And while it does contain a small jolt of caffeine, tea contains no sodium, fat or sugar and is virtually calorie-free.
So sit back, pour yourself a cup (or a tall glass), and enjoy a spot of Tea 101.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2258 or mfisher@
DaytonDailyNews.com.
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Types of tea
Black tea: Of the varieties of tea, black tea is oxidized the longest: for up to four hours. (Oxidation refers to the practice of setting aside the processed tea leaves to be exposed to air for a period of time.) The longer oxidation period means that black tea is generally stronger in flavor and caffeine.
Oolong tea: Falling between green tea and black tea, oolong tea is manufactured in such a way that its leaves are only partly oxidized.
Green tea: In green tea, the leaves are not oxidized at all, which preserves some of the powerful antioxidants in the leaves. Much of the recent positive health news regarding teas have focused on green tea.
White tea: "Genuine" white tea is considered to be derived from the first buds of the tea bush and grown exclusively in the Fujian Province of China. The name of "white tea" refers to the silver-colored (white) hairs on the picked tea bud. White tea is the least processed of all teas. Availability is limited, and its cost high.
Source: Tea Council of the USA
Tea facts
Tea is nearly 5,000 years old. It was discovered in 2737 B.C. by Chinese Emperor Shen-Nung, known as the "Divine Healer," when, as legend goes, some tea leaves accidentally blew into the Emperor's pot of boiling water.
Much of the world's tea is grown in mountainous areas from 3,000 to 7,000 feet above sea level. Leading tea-producing countries include Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Kenya Malawi, Sri Lanka and Tanzania.
On any given day, more than 127 million Americans — not quite half of the nation's population — are drinking tea, to the tune of 50 billion servings, or more than 2.25 billion gallons a year.
About 83 percent of all tea consumed was black tea, 16 percent was green tea and a small remaining amount was oolong tea.
Approximately 85 percent of tea consumed in America is iced.
Over the last 10 years, ready-to-drink tea has grown nearly tenfold. In 2006, ready-to-drink sales were estimated at $2.65 billion.
About two-thirds of the tea brewed in the United States was prepared using tea bags. Ready-to-drink and iced-tea mix make up about one-fourth of all tea prepared in the United States, with instant and loose tea accounting for the balance.
Source: The Tea Council of the USA
