TEA AND COFFEE

52 Tea & Coffee Trade Journal | www.teaandcoffee.net I n a country like China where green tea has been the standard cup since its beginning, additional tea categories have been developed later on for the imperial pal- ace, namely the rare white and yellow teas. The red teas were created in the 19 th century for export to Western markets. Completing the range are the dark teas for the border populations and the blue green/aka wulong teas for refined local consumption. Looking at the most recent statistics released by the Chinese government, the 2013 data show a total tea production of 1,886,250 million metric tons (mt) shared out between 66 percent of green teas, 12 percent of wulong teas, 10.5 percent of red teas, 10.5 percent of black teas, 0.6 percent of white teas and 0.15 percent of yellow teas. With their very ancient tea traditions, which have grad- ually developed over more than 2,500 years, the Chinese consider all their six tea categories unique. This opinion is found- ed firstly on their unconditional link to the various production areas, all specific regional terroirs, and secondly on the many specific manufacturing processes. The six main tea categories all take their name from the color of the cup and the infused leaves. Green teas come from green leaves and offer green cups, red teas come from fully oxidized leaves, which make red cups, and yellow teas are made from yellow- ish leaves and offer pale yellow cups, etc. Before gaining access to the Chinese tea gardens and tea manufacturing plants, European consumers generally believed that green and black teas came from dif- ferent plants. It was the famous Scottish botanist Robert Fortune, who travelled around in Fujian in the 1840s disguised as a Mandarin and found out that all teas came from the same plant, the camellia sinensis, be the cup green or not. With the improved botanical insight of starting off their own tea growing in their colonial territories in India, Sri Lanka and later on in East Africa, the British tea industry, from the beginning, opted for fully oxidized teas, which were easier to transport, easier to brew and could be enriched with milk and sugar for more nutrition. These were the black teas of the British and other European markets. In China, with green teas being the standard and white, yellow, blue, green and dark already well established, the trade with the West required some adjust- ment to that taste preference, and some tea regions started to develop fully oxi- dized teas. These teas had dark brown leaves, however, and the cups were red, from dark red to brighter reds. Therefore the Chinese fitted them into their tea color range by calling them Hong Cha, i.e. red teas. Nowadays, in order to avoid confusion, most experts consider that red & yellow teas A Growing Demand for Red & Yellow Teas Soon after their creation, red and yellow teas gained rapid fame in the West. Today, they remain popular globally, partly due to relatively low production and high domestic consumption in China. By Barbara Dufrêne All photos courtesy of Barbara Dufrêne Yi Hong or Yichang red tea, whole leaf and calibrated.

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