Green Tea - A Tea from the Far East

Green tea is a kind of tea that has been very popular in China and Japan for centuries, and has recently seen a massive explosion in popularity in the West. Its rise is linked in many ways to that of the alternative health movement, which sees green tea as having a range of traditional healing properties and abilities to cure diseases. Although these claims have not been proven, there is documentation for belief in them that goes back over a thousand years.

Some green tea is produced outside China and Japan, but it is mostly considered to be cheap imitations of the ‘real thing’ and not worth paying attention to, with the possible exception of a few Indian teas. Most green tea drinkers still import their tea from the East, considering this to be the best tea, and some green teas have become especially famous, such as Japanese sencha, and the Chinese teas Longjing, Hou Kui, Piluochun, and many more besides. Although most supermarkets still only stock one form of generic ‘green tea’, which is usually of very poor quality, health food and herbal shops will generally have a whole range of high-quality, albeit expensive, green teas to choose from.

In Japan, green tea is used as part of a ‘tea ceremony’, a Buddhist tradition where tea is specially prepared and served to the people present. Participating in the ceremony at all requires intimate knowledge of how it works, meaning that few non-Japanese have ever done so. Tea holds an interesting place in Chinese culture, too, with making tea often being used as a means of non-verbal communication to express sentiments like “I’m sorry” or “thank you”. The mythos surrounding tea in Eastern cultures allows the Western green tea drinker to feel that they are taking part in something ancient, traditional and mysterious simply by drinking green tea, and to a certain extent they are.

Does Green Tea taste like grass?

According to Chinese legend, green tea was invented by an emperor who was out in the forest, and had just boiled a kettle of water on his campfire. Suddenly, a freak gust of wind put out his fire and blew leaves from a nearby tree into the emperor’s hot water. When he came back, the emperor was upset, but still decided to drink the water – only to find that it now tasted excellent. Realising what had happened, he took some of the leaves from the tree home with him, and so invented tea.

Whether that’s true or not, there is no doubting that tea has a long and noble history in China and many other Asian countries, and most of the tea they consume has long been either white or green tea. It is known to have been consumed as long ago as the 9th century in Japan, and has long been a social drink and a status symbol, as well as a drink that is considered to have a wide variety of health benefits.

The difference between green tea and Western black tea isn’t that they are different plants – they are both made from camellia sinesis, the tea plant – but that the leaves are treated differently after they are picked. Black tea is first dried out and then fermented so that it will last longer, while green tea’s treatment stops after the drying stage, while the green colour of the leaves is still present. While this means that green tea doesn’t stay fresh for very long, it also means that it has a much fresher taste than black tea, and many believe that it is much better for you.

The first time you taste green tea you will probably think that it somehow tastes ‘green’, or grass-like, but it is hard to describe. The best way to figure out whether you’ll like it or not is to just give it a go.

Different types of Green Tea

If you try to buy green tea in a supermarket – even in a very large one – the chances are that you’ll only find one kind of green tea: the kind with ‘green tea’ written on the packet. The green tea that these packets contain tends to be of the absolute lowest quality, and so they are best avoided. Instead, you should try to buy your tea from Chinese markets or food stores, or order it over the Internet, as then you will be able to choose from the full range of green teas.

So which different green teas are there? Well, the most common green tea in Western countries is low-grade Gunpowder – that’s the stuff you’ll generally find in the supermarket. It is used because it is cheap, and stays fresher for longer than other green teas, because of the way it is rolled up into little balls.

The most popular green tea in China is Dragon Well, or Lung Ching, a bright green and quite expensive kind of tea. Many consider it to be the best green tea, but because it is expensive and not very much is produced, it is prone to imitation – make sure you trust whoever you’re buying this tea from to sell you the real thing.

In Japan, green tea drinkers prefer Sencha, a sweeter kind of green tea. It is cheaper than Dragon Well, more the kind of tea you could drink every day, but none the worse for it. Sencha is also more readily available over here than Chinese green teas tend to be, and there is a slightly cheaper version called Bancha as well.

The sweetest kind of green tea is Macha, the tea used in the Japanese tea ceremonies. It is very expensive and very nice, and tastes more like a luxury dessert than the everyday tea you’re probably used to – in Japan, it is a popular flavour of sweets and ice cream. If you ever get a chance to drink Macha, it’s well worth trying, because it really is the king of green teas.