Lisbon Public Library hosted Judith Leavitt from Talking Tea LLC to present about the history of tea and the different varieties that compose the beverage of choice.
Leavitt said she has been drinking the beverage since being a child, and decided to focus more research into tea when she retired, including publishing two different books on the subject.
She also collects many different tea varieties. Leavitt started working on her first book on the varieties of teas just before COVID hit.
“We weren’t able to do any in person events until 2021,” Leavitt said.
Leavitt said there are six different varieties of teas –white, yellow, green, oolong, black and pureh tea.
“A lot of the varieties of yellow teas are not found outside of China because there’s one more step in the brewing process,” Leavitt said.
Leavitt said that teas all come from the same plant, some of the variety for different teas is all in how the plant is processed. Black teas are fully oxidized (meaning their leaves are dried out and rolled).
Green teas leaves are not oxidized at all to preserve their flavor.
Oolong teas have partial oxidation, with the oxidation process stopped before it’s complete to preserve flavors.
Yellow tea the leaves are steamed to halt oxidation, and then processed in a warm/moist environment to give their unique color and flavors.
Pureh teas are teas that go through another oxidation process after the initial fixation of the tea.
Another variant that is important to know in tea making is the temperature at which the leaves should be prepared. Certain tea leaves will only need to be cooked at a lower temperature, with black tea leaves being the one requiring the highest temperature for brewing. Leavitt recommended getting a variable temperature boiling pot so you can get water to the temperature your tea requires and get the proper flavor from the leaves.
Leavitt said that one of the reasons she loves drinking tea is because the cost per cup is more economical than coffee or other hot beverages.
Tea cakes used to refer to how tea was packaged, with the leaves being packaged in bricks. Its history, depending on what history you follow, has the origins stretching from either 2700 BCE to 500CE.
The large majority of teas are grown in India and China.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, there were a lot of tea leaves lost, as it was harder to harvest the leaves during the harvest. Yet sales of tea, Leavitt said, remained high, as shops were able to adapt to the pandemic and getting tea to customers.
The polyphenols and flavonoids in most teas offer health benefits, including helping assist with memory, reaction time and attentiveness. The beverage can help reduce blood pressure, lower cholesterol and has benefits for the cardiovascular system as well.
In 1904 was the first invention of iced tea, and 1908 saw the first invention of tea bags, which help keep leaves from the water in brewing. Leavitt said 1950s was when Nestea was invented. The specialty tea market has only exploded since the 1990s.
The trend for afternoon teas was started by Anna Duchess of Bodham, and the differentiation between high and low tea depended on what was served that accompanied the tea.
Turkey, Morocco, Ireland, Markerash, and the United Kingdom are some of the top consumers of tea, but the United States trend line shows more people are drinking tea and better quality teas.
“The ready to drink tea market is one of the largest growing tea markets right now,” Leavitt said.