Premium Tea Blends To Suit All Your Needs

2007-10-27 Word Count: 535 Category: Food & Beverage

Most of the teas available today are blends. This is because truly pure teas are never the same. For example, a fine black tea from a certain estate or province and of a certain plucking date will grow differently each year, with its own nuances of taste and flavor.
There are two reasons for developing premium tea blends. Number one is to try to create a standard quality for a particular tea. A cost-conscious but quality tea blend can be created by mixing a small amount of high grade tea with a large amount of a lower grade tea. The other reason to develop a premium tea blend is to create a new flavor.
The tea plant, Camellia Sinensis, is usually referred to both China, and parts of India. Wild tea plants can grow more that 90 feet. In the past they trained monkeys to pick the leaves and throw them down, where they were collected. Today plants are kept to a height of about three feet for easy picking and cultivated as a plantation crop. All premium tea blends are then stored in airtight containers out of direct sunlight, so that they do not loose their flavor or take on foreign aromas.
More than 2000 different kinds of tea exist in the world. While over 25 different countries make it, China, India, Japan, and Nepal are the primary ones. Not only is tea healthy, it also has a good flavor and improves one's spirit.
Tea comes in three main types: Oolong, Green, and Black, with each one having its own variations. Green and Black tea are both derived from the same tea plant, but undergo separate processing to be created. The Black tea is created by oxidizing the leaves for several hours prior to the drying process, and the Green is created by steaming the leaves immediately upon picking. Oolong is of either Green or Black variety and is partially fermented to keep some of delicate flavors associated with black tea. Green tea has long been considered to be beneficial to your health for a variety of reasons and recent science has borne out that fact.
Tea became the Chinese national beverage of choice during the Tang Dynasty (816-906 B.C.). Prior to the construction of the Suez Canal in 1869, shipping tea from China to Europe was extremely expensive. Sea could travel by sea around the Horn of Africa, or overland through the Silk road, but it took months of transit time, and the tea lost some of it's freshness along the way. Tea shipped by sea was known as "Canton" tea, and tea shipped overland was known as "Caravan" tea. Caravan tea was more highly valued as it was of better quality.
So many people love tea that it has quickly become a huge business. There are a lot of tea related items sold in various stores. In addition to the premium tea blends, tea kits make great gifts! These kits might include the following items: tea gift baskets that relate to a theme, tea and chocolate, tea chests, teapots, Yuletide gift baskets, teacups, etcetera, etcetera. The Internet provides a great resource for learning all about tea.

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Most teas currently available on the market are blends because pure teas can vary significantly from year to year. Premium tea blends (tea-store.net/premium-teas.php) are created for enhanced and consistent taste. The tea plant, Camellia Sinensis, is grown in over 25 countries around the world. The three main categories of tea are black, green, and oolong. The differences between them lie in the processing.