Tea becomes easier to understand once you stop treating all its names as one long list. A name may describe a processing family, a place, a cultivar, a finished tea or a way of preparing it. Oolong is a processing family; Assam is a region and also lends its name to a botanical variety; Tieguanyin is both a cultivar and a tea style; matcha is a particular powdered green tea.

This page is the map of RealiTea's tea library. It begins with the plant and the decisions that change a harvested shoot into tea, then leads to guides on tea types, producing regions, brewing, matcha, individual teas, culture and health claims.

New to tea? Start here

  • Tea or tisane? Learn why peppermint tea is not made from the tea plant, yet remains a perfectly normal name in everyday English.
  • The six types of tea See how green, white, yellow, oolong, black and dark tea are distinguished by their characteristic processing.
  • How to brew loose-leaf tea Start with sensible amounts, temperatures and infusion times, then adjust them to the particular leaf and your own taste.
  • The basic tea quiz Test the map after you have explored it.

What is the tea plant?

Tea in the narrow botanical and trade sense is made from the leaves, leaf buds and tender stems of Camellia sinensis, an evergreen shrub or tree in the camellia family. It is one species, but not one uniform crop. Tea growers work with different botanical varieties, hundreds of cultivars, seed-grown local populations, different plucking standards and many harvest seasons.

The plant's history is also broader than the familiar phrase “tea comes from southwest China.” The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew places the native range from the eastern Himalaya through southern China and northern Indochina, including Assam, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. A major genetic study found evidence consistent with separate domestication histories for China-type tea, Chinese Assam-type tea and Indian Assam-type tea. The details remain an active field of research; a single birthplace and date are too tidy.

Shennong, the culture hero said to have discovered tea when leaves fell into boiling water, belongs to Chinese tea legend. He is important to the story people tell about tea, but not evidence for a literal discovery in 2737 BCE. Archaeology gives us firmer, later dates. Plant remains from the mausoleum of the Western Han emperor Jing were identified as tea, showing that it was consumed at the imperial court roughly 2,100 years ago. The same research found tea in western Tibet by about 200 CE, evidence of early long-distance exchange. The excavation and analysis are published in Scientific Reports.

Five questions that explain almost any tea

1. What was harvested?

A bud, a bud with one or two leaves, mature leaves and tender stems do not produce the same material. Baihao Yinzhen is made from buds, while leafier white teas such as Shoumei use a different plucking standard. Kukicha deliberately includes stems. Cultivar and season matter as well: processing cannot make every raw leaf behave or taste alike.

2. Where and when did it grow?

Climate, weather during the growing season, soil, elevation, shade, farming and harvest timing all influence the leaf. None works as a simple quality switch. High elevation can slow growth, for example, but it does not guarantee a delicate or superior tea; lowland tea is not automatically coarse or earthy. Begin with our guides to tea-growing regions and the main tea-producing countries, then look at the individual country pages below.

3. How was the leaf processed?

Withering, heating, bruising, rolling, oxidation, microbial fermentation, shaping and drying are tools rather than a compulsory sequence. Which operations are used, when they occur and how the maker controls moisture and temperature determine the broad tea type. China's current tea classification standard, GB/T 30766-2014, formalises six processing families. They are not six grades and do not form a simple ladder from pale to dark.

4. What happened after primary processing?

A tea may be roasted, scented, blended, compressed or stored. Some green teas are valued for freshness; some white, oolong, dark and raw Pu-erh teas can change usefully in suitable storage. Age alone is not a quality mark, and not every tea improves with it. Clean material, sound processing and appropriate storage still come first.

5. How was it brewed?

Dose, water, temperature, vessel and time can make the same leaves seem thin, fragrant, harsh or balanced. Category-wide rules are only starting points. A dense rolled oolong, airy Silver Needle and broken Assam cannot sensibly share one leaf-volume instruction. For Western-style brewing, about 2 g of tea per 200 ml of water and an infusion of two to four minutes is a useful first experiment; adjust from there. The loose-leaf brewing guide explains the variables and shorter, repeated infusions.

Explore the six tea types

The six basic tea types and the RealiTea guides connected with them
Tea type Characteristic process Continue exploring
Green tea Early heating limits enzymatic oxidation before shaping and drying Green tea guide, Vietnamese Chè Non, Japanese Kukicha and matcha
White tea Withering and drying, normally without rolling or early fixation White tea guide, Bai Mudan / Pai Mu Tan and White Pine Needle
Yellow tea Fixation followed by a controlled warm, moist yellowing stage Yellow tea guide
Oolong tea Controlled bruising and partial enzymatic oxidation before fixation Oolong tea guide
Black tea Withering, rolling or cutting, extensive enzymatic oxidation, then drying Black tea guide, Jin Jun Mei, Assam and English Breakfast
Dark tea Microbial fermentation is central to production; later processing and storage vary Begin with the Pu-erh guide. Ripe and raw Pu-erh need to be distinguished rather than treated as one identical process.

For the fuller explanation—including why white tea is not necessarily “the least oxidised,” why oolong percentages are unreliable and why dark tea is not simply black tea aged for longer—read the six types of tea.

Explore tea by origin

Country guides are useful maps, not flavour guarantees. China, India and Vietnam each contain multiple climates, plant populations and manufacturing traditions; even a single named region can produce very different teas. Start with the overview pages, then choose a country.

Asia

Africa, Europe and the Americas

Individual teas and styles

  • Jin Jun Mei: Tongmu origin, the Chinese standard and why the name alone does not prove authenticity
  • Chè Non: green tea from Thái Nguyên, Vietnam
  • Bai Mudan / Pai Mu Tan: a leaf-and-bud style of Chinese white tea
  • White Pine Needle: a white-tea profile
  • Kukicha: Japanese tea made with stems as well as leaf material
  • Assam tea: the region, the plant material and the black teas associated with the name
  • English Breakfast: a blend style rather than a protected origin

Matcha

Matcha belongs to green tea, but its shaded cultivation, tencha production, grinding, storage and preparation justify a library of its own.

Tea culture, language and modern drinks

Tea, caffeine and health claims

Tea is food and drink, not medicine. Research can identify compounds and associations, but it rarely justifies promises that one tea will detoxify the body, prevent disease or cause meaningful weight loss. Health articles therefore need different evidence and more cautious language than a brewing or tasting guide.

From reading to tasting

Processing terms and origin names are easier to remember when you can compare the leaves in front of you. Our current tea selection shows what is available to drink at RealiTea in Salzburg. The library will continue to grow as we revise the existing guides and add the teas, regions and questions that deserve a closer look.