China Green

What Is It?

Green tea is broken down into two different types of production - where the leaves are either steamed or pan-fried. The tea plant from which the tea originates is called Camellia Sinensis - a Chinese leaf variety from the Anhui in the South East Province of China.

What's so interesting about this tea is its silky needle like appearance, which is characteristic of a Sencha, or steamed tea. This is really quite unique to green tea, which makes us tea tasters all the more excited about tasting it.

About Finest China Green

As I've mentioned earlier, green tea is either produced by steaming or pan-frying the leaves. Both processes prevent the leaves' ability to oxidise.

The level of oxidisation affects the type of tea. For example, semi-oxidisation results in an Oolong Tea. But if we had left the leaves to fully oxidise, we'd have a Black Tea.

So a very hot 200-300°C is used to stop the oxidisation process and the enzymes from doing their magic too soon. The leaves usually stay in contact with the heat for 4 or 5 minutes, whether they're in there being pan-fried or steamed.

However, the longer the leaves are left to steam in high temperatures, the greener and more luminescent the tea becomes. Whereas, the pan-fried tea will tend to have a more yellow look in the cup.

Steaming the tea is what creates its luminescent colour and light, lingering taste that's so enjoyable.

Brewing, Serving and Tasting Your Tea

Now we'll prepare our Sencha Green Tea for tasting. There's a particular way that green tea should be enjoyed which is to use a little teapot. The built-in diffuser allows the leaves to stay in the pot while you pour the tea. We also love using beautiful cups that add an extra element of delight to the occasion.

Put one pretty good teaspoon-full of Sencha per person and fill the pot with boiled water (remember - allowing your boiled water to stand so it cools down a little bit can help to avoid that bitterness). It's a good idea to allow the tea to infuse for 3 to 4 minutes to really allow the colour, flavours and aromas to come out.

Assam tea is characteristic of the area in which it’s grown. These tea bushes love to grow at sea level, where temperatures range from about 35 to 38 degrees in the summer, and regulated by monsoon rains which keeps everything nice and cool. What most people don’t realise about this region of India, is that in the winter months, temperatures drop way down into single digits.

It's really sprung to life now. The result? A beautiful, really deep green tea with real character, which Mark Nicholls, our tea taster, describes as a tea with 'a nice length of sweetness that will go nicely with anything'.

We've enjoyed tasting this month's tea and hope you have too. Remember, green tea has the same level of caffeine in it as most other teas, so it makes a refreshing drink at any time of the day. In fact, we've been relying on our green tea to cool us down on all these lovely days we've been having!

So, until next time, happy tea time.

This month our fabulous master blender Mark Nicholls talks us through the wonder of Finest China Green.