All tea comes from the same plant

All tea is grown from one single species of the camellia genus, camellia sinensis. The difference between various types of tea are the conditions under which it was grown, the original branch from which the varietal was produced, and the particular processing style of the farmer who created the finished product. The difference illustrated in our spectrum above is the amount of oxidation the finished product has undergone. An un-oxidized tea will be a rich jade green, more oxidation will result in yellowish to dark red teas.

Green Tea

Green tea is un-oxidized tea. Immediately after harvest it is heated to prevent its juices from reacting with the oxygen in the air. The heat neutralizes the organic compounds in the leaves preserving green tea’s green color. In China, green teas are most commonly pan-fried or baked to stop oxidation. In Japan, green tea is steamed after harvest, giving Japanese teas a very distinct, rich flavor not commonly found elsewhere in the world. The best green teas can be said to carry a delicate, fresh, sweet green flavor and are made from the youngest and most tender leaves and buds.
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White Tea

White tea, considered by many to be the most unprocessed of the teas, is produced in early spring. Only the leaf-bud and perhaps the first small leaf are harvested. This leaf and bud are often naturally dried in the sun, lending them to various amounts of oxidation.
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Oolong Tea

This tea family, little known in the west, is actually the largest and most varied of the major three tea families. The oolong tea family makes up the entire region of the tea spectrum between “fully oxidized” and “un-oxidized.” Oolong teas range from extremely green to extremely dark. Surprisingly though, the flavor does not fade from a green tea taste to a black tea taste. Instead, like the colors of the rainbow, each stop along the spectrum has a unique flavor of its own, as distinct from each other as orange is from blue.

Oolong teas are made from larger, more mature leaves and buds. These tougher leaves oxidize more slowly allowing the tea crafter to carefully monitor the level and rate of oxidation, bringing the process to a halt at that exact point on the tea spectrum that defines his or her intended tea. Similarly to green tea, heat is used to bring oxidation to an end.
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Black Tea

Black tea is at the other end of the spectrum. Where green is un-oxidized, black tea is fully or 100% oxidized. Rather than heating the tea to prevent oxidation, after harvest black tea is purposely shaken and stirred to break down cell walls in the leaves and expose their juices to the air. Like green tea, high grade black tea is made from the youngest and most tender leaves and leaf buds. These younger, tenderer leaves expose their juices more readily than older leaves, allowing them to oxidize fully and rapidly.
[Try our black tea]