Green Tea

Tea drinking as in time immemorial

“Some tea leaves appear wrinkly, just like the boots of Tartar equestrians, others regular just like a bull’s chest, others crimpy like moving clouds over the mountains, others like water, stirred by a windy breeze or like a newly ploughed land on which heavy rain has just alit” (Lu-Yu, AD 740 – 804). The Chinese had been producing green tea using alternative methods since the sixth century before Christ, but it wasn’t until the eighth century when the Chinese poet Lu Yu wrote about it in detail in his book Ch’a-ching – The book of tea –
that it became widely known. In contrast to black tea, green tea is not fermented during the production process. It was typical in China to prevent the process of oxidation by quickly roasting the tea leaves in a hot wok, though this step also sometimes subdued the tartly spicy to flowery flavors of the tea.