In our first installment, we refuted 6 misstatements regarding tea. Unfortunately, that was merely a smidgen of the sea of perpetuated tea myths but looking on the bright side it does provide us with ample writing material.
Let us look at another 6 misstatements:
1) “All teas come from the same plant so they have substantially the same health benefits”
That aside, different types of teas are processed differently and it’s not a stretch to imagine different health properties.
The best example I can illustrate is that of a chicken- not just the same animal but the same chicken and the same body part- e.g. the thigh. If you took the left thigh and deep fried it while grilling the right thigh, do you think you will derive the same calories and nutritional value from it?
*For the sake of nutritionist and fitness trainers across the globe I hope that question need not be anything more than rhetorical.*
As a reference according to USDA database of flavonoids content for selected food, the mean Epicathecin content of black tea and green tea were 2.13 and 7.36 mg/1000 respectively or 345%, hardly insubstantial. Comparing the maximum Epicathecin content of those sampled, for black tea it is 8.74 while the maximum for green tea is 26.
Source: http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/12354500/Data/Flav/Flav_R03.pdf
The same health benefits, not quite. That said fresh good quality green tea taste fantastic so you sacrifice nothing.
2) “The most crucial part which defines the categories of tea is oxidizing”
The problem with this statement is that it assumes once a certain threshold of oxidation is crossed, the tea evolves from being a green to a white to an oolong then a black. What of yellow and dark tea then?
It seems to imply that if you let a white tea wither too long, it will become an oolong tea or an oolong that is ‘over-oxidized’ becomes a black tea. If so, why aren’t there any industry standards on the level of oxidization that makes a white a white and so forth?
Clearly this statement doesn’t make sense. Instead, teas are classified based on their method of production.
i) Green teas undergo ‘shaqing’ right after plucking
ii) White teas are un-rolled and do not undergo ‘shaqing’
iii) Yellow teas undergo a process known as ‘men huang’ which uses heat and humidity to ‘stew’ and ‘yellow’ the teas
iv) Oolong teas undergo ‘yaoqing’ or rattling to bruise the leaves and speed up oxidation before ‘shaqing’ to halt the process
v) Black teas are left to oxidized and do not undergo ‘shaqing’
vi) Dark teas undergo ‘wodui’, a process to speed up fermentation
*Shaqing is a crucial step in the production of tea as leaves are heated rapidly to destroy the enzymes that cause oxidation
3) “The Chinese grading system of tea is based on appearance and does not describe the flavor quality”
This statement demeans the efforts that Chinese tea industry experts made to define detailed systems of grading for each type of tea by relegating it to an beauty contest.
The Chinese system of grading has several components including appearance of dry leaves, wet leaves, taste and aroma. It varies across each category of tea but nowhere do the combination of taste and aroma fail to attribute higher than 50% of the components in the scoring department.
In addition, the scoring for appearances is not merely aesthetics but representative of the production quality of the tea, such as firing strength and ‘yao qing’ skill for example.
4) “In general, the larger the leaf and the more tightly rolled the tea, the longer it will stay fresh”
This statement is completely illogical.
‘Green style’ Tieguanyin and Taiwanese Oolongs are made from large matured leaves and tightly rolled but they have very short shelf-lives, that’s why they are refrigerated and vacuum packed by knowledgeable vendors.
Perhaps that statement was made based on Pu-er, being made from large leaves of the Assamica variety and tightly compressed but apart from that, I can’t imagine what possessed anyone to draw that conclusion.
5) “The Chinese almost exclusively drink green tea”
Um, where did all the 6 major categories of tea originate from? Or which is the only country in the whole to produce all 6 categories of tea?
Green tea makes up most of the teas consumed in China, no question but the Chinese consume oolong (a significant segment over the past ten years), black tea (recently resurgent), dark tea (especially among minority tribes) and basically every type of tea.
6) “The golden ratio is 1 teaspoon per 8 ounce cup”
There is basically no golden ratio when it comes to making tea, not in such general terms.
Not to say that the volume varies greatly across different categories, even within the same type of tea there is a huge disparity in the volume for the same given weight.
See the illustration between 5g of Dancong and 5g of Tieguanyin.
*In a rare shameless act of self-promotion: we go further, for every tea we sell we provide both recommended weight and volume measured by a standardized measuring spatula which we give free