Every word a tea-drinker
eventually needs.

Deliberate long-term storage that transforms certain teas — pu-erh, white tea, dark tea — into something deeper.

Processing

The drying, puckering sensation in your mouth — tannins binding to your saliva proteins.

Tasting

The final autumn pluck — gentler, sweeter, lower in caffeine, lovely after dinner.

Harvest & Flushes

'Green Snail Spring' — tightly spiraled, fuzzy green tea from Lake Tai with intense fruity aroma.

Famous Teas

Fully oxidised tea — bold, brisk, the most globally exported style of all.

Tea Types

A tea made by combining leaves from different gardens, regions, harvests or species.

Tea Types

The weight or fullness of the tea on your palate — 'thin', 'medium', 'full'.

Tasting

The single plant species from which all true tea — white, green, oolong, black, dark — is made.

Plant & Botany

The bamboo whisk used to froth matcha in a chawan — carved from a single piece of bamboo.

Brewing

A wide Japanese tea bowl used for whisking and drinking matcha.

Brewing

A tea bush propagated from a cutting rather than seed, ensuring it is genetically identical to its parent.

Plant & Botany

Steeping tea in cold or room-temperature water for hours — sweet, smooth, low-caffeine.

Brewing

Pressing tea into bricks, cakes or tuocha for storage and transport — the foundation of pu-erh and brick teas.

Processing

'Crush, Tear, Curl' — the industrial process that produces small uniform pellets for tea bags.

Processing

A specific named variety of tea plant, selected for traits like flavour, hardiness or yield.

Plant & Botany

'Big Red Robe' — the legendary roasted oolong from Wuyi's cliffs, the most expensive tea in the world.

Famous Teas

The umbrella for all post-fermented teas — pu-erh, Liu Bao, Fu Zhuan, Anhua dark teas.

Tea Types

Microbial transformation of tea leaves over months or years — the secret of pu-erh and dark teas.

Processing

What lingers in the mouth after you swallow — the tea's final, often most revealing, statement.

Tasting

The very first plucking of the year, in early spring — typically the most aromatic and most expensive.

Harvest & Flushes

The small undeveloped leaf at the base of a new shoot — usually discarded by careful pluckers.

Harvest & Flushes

Heating leaves to halt oxidation — the defining moment of green tea processing.

Processing

'Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe' — the top grade of Indian whole-leaf black tea.

Quality & Grades

A lidded ceramic bowl used to brew and pour tea — the Chinese Swiss-army knife.

Brewing

'Tea with skill' — a Chinese brewing style using lots of leaf, very little water and many short infusions.

Brewing

Tea + hot water in a single mug, leaves left in, refilled all day — the most casual Chinese style.

Brewing

Unoxidised tea — fresh, vegetal, the world's most varied tea family.

Tea Types

'Jewel Dew' — Japan's most prized green tea, deeply shaded and outrageously umami.

Famous Teas

Tea grown above ~1,000 m, where slow growth and cool nights concentrate aromatic compounds.

Plant & Botany

'Throat-rhyme' — the sensation of the tea's finish descending and lingering in the throat.

Tasting

'Returning sweetness' — the cool, sweet bloom that follows a bitter sip in fine sheng pu-erh.

Tasting

A single round of brewing — one steep yields one infusion; gongfu yields many in succession.

Brewing

A small Japanese teapot with a side handle and built-in mesh strainer — designed for sencha and gyokuro.

Brewing

The four physical sizes that finished black tea is sorted into.

Quality & Grades

China's most famous green tea — flat, jade-coloured leaves with chestnut and toasted-bean aromas.

Famous Teas

Japanese powdered green tea, whisked with hot water — the heart of the tea ceremony.

Famous Teas

Mid-year plucking during heavy monsoon rain — bold, brisk, often used for chai blends.

Harvest & Flushes

The textural impression a tea leaves on your palate — silky, oily, watery, granular, plush.

Tasting

Partially oxidised tea (10–80%) — the most diverse and most artisanal tea family.

Tea Types

Tea processed by traditional methods that keep the leaf whole — the opposite of CTC.

Quality & Grades

The browning of bruised tea leaves — the single most important variable defining tea type.

Processing

Hand-tossing leaves in a hot iron wok to fix them — the Chinese way of stopping oxidation.

Processing

The act of harvesting tea leaves by hand or by machine.

Harvest & Flushes

Microbially fermented tea from Yunnan — the only true 'aged' tea, often pressed into cakes.

Tea Types

The most prized cultivar of Taiwanese high-mountain oolong — 'Green Heart'.

Plant & Botany

Dry-firing finished tea over hours or days to deepen flavour — most associated with Wuyi and Dong Ding oolongs.

Processing

Twisting or rolling withered leaves to break their cell walls and release juices.

Processing

Late spring / early summer plucking, famously round and 'muscatel' in Darjeeling.

Harvest & Flushes

Japan's most-consumed tea — needle-shaped, vivid green, briskly grassy and umami.

Famous Teas

Covering tea bushes for 2–4 weeks before harvest to boost umami and chlorophyll.

Processing

The final stage that gives tea its recognisable form: needles, pearls, balls, twists, flat blades.

Processing

Naturally aged pu-erh — bright, bitter and floral when young, transforming over decades.

Tea Types

Wet-piled pu-erh — earthy, dark, smooth, ready to drink young.

Tea Types

The aristocrat of white tea — only the unopened buds, covered in silvery down.

Famous Teas

Tea sourced from one specific estate, garden, or grower — rather than blended from many.

Plant & Botany

Drying tea over pinewood fires to give it a campfire aroma — the trademark of Lapsang Souchong.

Processing

Fixing tea leaves with high-pressure steam — the Japanese way of stopping oxidation.

Processing

The act of letting tea leaves sit in hot water for a measured time.

Brewing

A small porous sachet of tea, invented by accident in New York in 1908.

Quality & Grades

The combination of soil, altitude, climate and tradition that gives tea from a specific place its signature character.

Plant & Botany

'Iron Goddess of Mercy' — Anxi's iconic balled oolong, ranging from emerald-floral to dark-roasted.

Famous Teas

A finished tea full of golden or silver buds, signalling careful plucking and high quality.

Harvest & Flushes

An infusion made from any plant other than Camellia sinensis — chamomile, mint, rooibos, hibiscus.

Plant & Botany

The classic ideal pluck — the topmost unopened bud plus the two youngest leaves below it.

Harvest & Flushes

The savoury 'fifth taste' — driven in tea by the amino acid theanine.

Tasting

The large-leaf Indian variety — vigorous, bold, the workhorse behind Assam, Ceylon and most African black teas.

Plant & Botany

The small-leaf Chinese variety of the tea plant — refined flavours, cold-tolerant, ideal for green and white teas.

Plant & Botany

The single most important variable in tea brewing — get the temperature wrong and any tea fails.

Brewing

Brewing style with less leaf, more water and longer steeps — a single full mug or pot at a time.

Brewing

The accelerated wet-fermentation method that creates ripe (shou) pu-erh in 45–60 days.

Processing

The least processed tea — withered and dried, nothing more — pale, sweet and gentle.

Tea Types

The first processing step — letting freshly plucked leaves lose moisture and grow supple.

Processing

'Rock-rhyme' — the unmistakable mineral signature of teas grown on Wuyi's cliffs.

Tasting

A rare Chinese category in which lightly oxidised leaves are gently 'sealed' under cloth — mellow and golden.

Tea Types

Famous unglazed purple-clay teapot from Yixing, Jiangsu — believed to 'season' with use.

Brewing