Talk:Tea

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To-do list for Tea: edit · history · watch · refresh
  • Expand the section on plantation. How long does the shrub grow, how long it is useful.
  • Explain a difference between chinese and assamica type and hybrids.
  • Add section about plucking. How (hand vs. machine), plucking formulas. How often (flushes).
  • Write short overview of the Tea history in Asia, add it to the top of the section.
  • Merge historical information from Tea culture (China, Japan) to Tea history (China, Japan)
  • Explain the way tea spread around the world (Mongolia, Middle east, caravans atc.).
  • Add sections about former USSR countries. E.g. the picture now illustrating planting of tea in Russia should go Georgia.
  • Expound on origins and types of North African tea rituals (Morocco, etc).
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Contents

[edit] Draft for a overhaul of the processing/classification section

At the end is a stab at a complete classification, the diversity is amazing, and far more subtle than un-, semi, and fully-fermented. Since this is very complicated, I suggest starting with a list of famous teas, similar to what we have now. Technically speaking, all of these divisions can be mixed and matched, each chinese variety can be fermented fully of left unfermented, and be made from leaves picked at different seasons. In reality, certain varieties, like red tea, tend to be fully fermented, leading to lots of confusion. Green tea is particularly complicated.

My draft list of famous teas:

South Asian and British teas: orange pekoe, darjeeling, earl grey, assam (english breakfast, irish breakfast), masala chai, nilgiri

Japanese: matcha, genmaicha, kukicha, sencha, bancha, gyokuro

Chinese: white, yellow, black tea, red tea (including lapsang souchong), green tea (oolong, pu-er, jasmine, lung ching, gunpowder)

CLASSIFICATIONS

By plant type (Botanical):

1. Assam, India

2. Cambodia, Southeast Asia

3. China:

  a. white
  b. yellow
  c. light green
     inc. oolong
  d. green
     inc. lung ching, pu-er, gunpowder
  e. red (imported to india and sometimes crossed with Assam)
     inc. darjeeling, earl grey, orange pekoe, and lapsang souchong
  f. black

By Process: 1. Brick/Ball (china)

  --especially pu-er

2. Loose Leaf

  a. by fermentation
     I. unfermented
       --lots of disagreement about what falls here, but certainly not all green teas!
     II. semi-fermented (not just oolong)
       --inc. oolong, most green teas, green-colored pu-er
     III. fully fermented
        --inc most red and black teas, and brown pu-er
  b. by other processes (mainly japan)
     I. twigs and stems: especially kukicha
     II. shelter, including gyokuro
     III. powdered, especially matcha
  c. by picking process
     I. machine (mostly south asia and southeast asia)
     II. hand (mostly east asia)
     III. monkey picked (china)
  d. by additive (before brewing)
     I. flowers, inc jasmine tea
     II. brown rice, especially genmaicha
     III. herbs, seeds, vegetables, shrimp, for example in TCM tonics
     IV. spices, especially masala chai
  e. by season
     I. spring (best quality)
     II. late season (late summer or early fall) (lowest quality)

By Grade (bud, leaf type, dust . . .) By Medicinal Properties

  a. yin
  b. balanced
  c. yang

--mjolsnes 10 August 2006

This seems like a really good idea. It really is an amazingly complicated subject. I'll help make these changes.Lesnail 15:51, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The processing/classification section

Claims the processing produces sugar. But the intro claims tea has no sugar. Perhaps the sugar doesnt come out of the tea when it is steeped?? But this seems unlikely. Please help.

Originally said three types of tea, which I changed to four to agree with the classification given in the intro. But then the section goes on to distinguish about seven distict varieties. If they really deserve to be counted separately then the count needs to go up from four. But some such as "yellow tea" probably should not be counted. --Lesnail 18:38, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Portuguese tea

You can verify all I have said about portuguese tea in

http://www.gorreana.com/historiae.htm

Any remarks just tell me.

[edit] Gorreana presentation in foreign

http://www.theteacaddy.com/SearchResult.aspx?CategoryID=157

Confirm the high price of this tea...

[edit] Recently included misinformation / vague statements

[1]

  • http://www.teausa.com is given as a source of "Today, tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world after water, with every one in two persons a tea-drinker." Yet the page does not contain such claim.
  • China, India, Sri Lanka and Japan are the major producers and exporters of tea leaves. is simply untrue. See virtually any tea production & export statistics [2]. Leading producers usually are India, China, Kenya, Sri Lanka. In export its completely different, as China and India are also leading tea consumtion.
  • Australia, Portugal,Pakistan, Argentina are important tea producing countries? Maybe, but the importance certainly isn't derived from tea production.
  • An average serving of tea contains only 1/2 to 1/3 of caffeine of the same serving size of coffee. One of the more confusing aspects of caffeine content is the fact that coffee contains less caffeine (1.5%) than tea (2.5% - 4.5%) when measured in its dry form.[3] [4] Maybe such crappy numbers are good enough for Encarta, but is it good enough for inclusion in Wikipedia? Stated this way it does not make much sense, average black tea infusion in Istanbul may contain 100x more caffein per volume than average oolong infusion in Taiwan. The stashtea reference is much better, but contradicts the claim, as caffein content of tea is given from 15 to 40 mg, divided by 80 mg in case of coffee its ~1/5 - 1/2, depending on type. It also warns why the reported values in the literature are so variable. and explains how the average serving was obtained. It would be better to have the contetn referenced from actual studies, not from an overview webpage which states values in literature are varied. --Wikimol 23:42, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
Wikimol, don't remove everything - if possible, correct, not delete. Mandel 09:26, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Introduction should IMO be very brief summary of the rest of the allready very long article. I thought good place for referenced production statistics would be in the Cultivation section, next to the graph with the same contents.
In case of caffeine contents, unless numbers are cited from resonable scientific sources, I'd prefer to avoid them. --Wikimol 09:52, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


Wikimol, THERE IS NO REFERENCE THAT PORTUGAL IS A MAJOR PRODUCER OF TEA!!!!!!! Did you even bother to read the article before state your remarks?

Actually Argentina is significant, at least to the US. Most Iced Tea Blends, consumed in the US and elsewhere, are blended from Argentina stocks.

Georgia (The country) is also important, though not mentioned in the article as a significant producing country, as during the cold war they supplied most of the Soviet Union.

The US, lack, of Tea production is also important. The US is the only country that I know of which can produce significant amounts of Tea but fails to have significant production due to wage differences.

apologies if i have read incorectly but the article states "When taking milk with tea, some add the tea to the milk rather than the other way around when using chilled milk; this avoids scalding the milk, leading to a better emulsion and nicer taste." referencing http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3016342.stm. Upon inspection of said article it says "As for adding milk to the tea after it is poured, the RSC issues a stern scientific warning against the practice. It seems that dribbling a stream of milk into hot water makes "denaturation of milk proteins" more likely. And who would want that?"

[edit] What is the most consumed beverage?

The tea article says that tea is the most consumed beverage in the world, after water. The coffee article Coffee says that coffee is the most consumed beverage. Which is it? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 143.115.159.53 (talk • contribs) .

Well, the articles claim 3.2 million tonnes of tea vs. 6.7 million tonnes of coffee. I assume both refers to the normal trade form, dried tea leaves vs. roasted coffee beans. Since you need a lot less tea per cup than coffee, I'd bet on tea. But it's probably reasonably close.--Stephan Schulz 23:24, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't think there is really any way to determine is the most consumed beverage. I have a book, called "The Tea Companion" that claims that more tea is drunk than any other beverage, I assume excluding water. So I reccommend thaht we just leave it as what all the sources say about how much is drunk, how much is produced, etc., do the same for the coffee page, and take that ugly notice off the top. Because there's no reason to have it up here if its not also on the coffee page, because the coffee page contradicts this one just as much as this one does the coffee page. --Benuski 02:33, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
It was also up on the coffee page, but someone removed it. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 10:28, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion vote

A new article on a liqueur made from Chinese tea is up for deletion. Please vote here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Qi (spirit). Thank you, Badagnani 07:15, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Red Tea

I think it might be useful to add a brief note in the black/red tea section explaining the fact that in other areas of the world, red tea is the name reserved for rooibos. This is a rather frequent occurrence, and referring only to the fact that in some areas black tea is called red tea could lead to confusion or even misinformation. I also think that some mention of (yerba) mate tea and rooibis in the introduction might be useful, in order to explain that those two drinks which are growing in popularity are not actual tea. I don't believe either are technically herbal teas and it would not be obvious to me that they qualify as "non-tea". TAsunder 17:53, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Whoops, apparently the first one is already there. TAsunder 17:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Russian Tea

No mention of the Samovar in Russia? Is that not what the two-tier teapot is called?

It's not russian tea, it's just black tea. I suppose you can mention Samovar in tea culture. Rikis 12:06, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fermentation Definition

In the 'Processing and classification' section it is presupposed that, by definition, fermentation requires microbial action. However, the article on fermentation does not imply this. Dictionary.com also disagrees, so long as a yeast-only definition is not used (which, if it was, would then disallow fungus fermentation to be so-called).

Tea is not actually fermented, but wilted and oxydized. However, for some reason this process has historically been (mis-)named "fermentation". We should probably have a line mentioning this use of language... --Stephan Schulz 13:41, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comment on merge suggestion

I disagree with the merge suggestion (suggestion was merging Camellia sinensis into tea). I think the botanical article should be used as a {{main}} article for a section in this one. The tea article is already quite large, merging won't help that. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 10:33, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Missing Mongolian brick tea

There is no mention of the brick tea brewed in Mongolia. Should this be added since salted tea is a very common drink in Mongolia?

Here's an excerpt from "http://weber.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/chin/hbtea.html" website: Brick tea (zhuānchá 砖茶 or jĭnyāchá 紧压茶) is tea (normally black tea) steamed and compressed into "bricks" of various shapes, in which form it is packaged and shipped, sometimes with flour or other additives (onions, ginger, animal blood) to hold it together and/or modify the flavor. Produced especially in Yúnnán 云南 and Sìchuān 四川, brick tea is little used by Chinese, it is the commonest tea in Mongolia (Mènggŭ 蒙古), Qīnghăi 青海, and Xīnjiāng 新疆, where it is commonly mixed with salt and milk when drunk, and in Tibet (Xīzàng 西藏), where it is mixed with salt and yak butter and (often) roasted barley flour.

Sure. Feel free to put something in the article about it. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 09:51, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Instant Tea

No mention was made of instant tea, commonly available in the UK (and, as i understand it, instant iced tea in america). No mention of instant tea is made anywhere on wikipedia, either, as it happens. I've written a brief paragraph on it in the Tea Packaging section, but I'm no expert and it's entirely the product of some quick googling, so might be inacurate. If someone knows more about the product, please do feel free to correct it; it could probably do with it's own article page, but I certainly don't know enough to do that one myself.

[edit] Tea Consumption

I've noticed that this article is lacking in facts/figures about how much tea is consumed on a regular basis. I have failed to find a decisive answer on the internet, so if anyone has this knowledge, I think it would make a valuable contribution to the article.

[edit] classification based on fermentation

There is an excellent book called "the way of tea" by Master Kam, despite the name, it's actually about chinese tea. The authors say that the common classifciaton of green tea (unfermented), oolong tea (partially fermented), black tea (fully fermented) is wrong. And though this article doesn't do this entirely, I do strongly diasagree that there are "four" "true teas". I will add some alternatives here, but I hope that other people can think of better solutions before I suggest one. Also, my perspetictive is mostly chinese, since I am now living in china.

Wikipedia is mostly about "the usual wisdom", and as the common classification is used almost everywhere it should probably stay in the article. If there are other proposal is literature, that could be menioned, but the core should stay with the common classification. (:I would agree its far from precise.) --Wikimol 11:07, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] random incorrectness

Apologies, I'm new to the Wikipedia syntax, but I noticed a translation of "kung-fu" as "time-energy" which afaik is wrong. I had heard (although this is one of those sourceless anecdotes) that it comes from the name of it's originator Kung fu tzu -- that is, "Master Teacher Kung" in the same form as Chuang tzu or Lao tzu. Can someone who can cite the chinese characters corroborate or prove me wrong?

There is 2 meaning for "kung-fu" in mandarin. One means martial arts; the other means "skillful works". The jargon is originate from tea drinking culture form Teo-Chew tribes in GuangDung, China. It means the beverages is prepare by a skillful master. It has nothing to do with Confucius/K'ung-fu-tzu.


[edit] do not merge

i don't think you should merge the section on tea with the history of tea article. it would make this current article even longer. if people want to read about tea history, they can go to the other article.

[edit] Concerning updates to Antioxident/Health info

I found a Health Center Online article concerning antioxidant levels in tea. According to the article, the antiox levels of black tea are in some cases higher than the levels in some green teas. Here is a link to the article. http://www.heartcenteronline.com/myheartdr/News_about_the_heart/Antioxidant_levels_of_common_teas_vary_widely.html

Blackthourne 16:41, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fluorine/fluoride content

There is a fair amount on the Internet about the potentially dangerous levels of naturally occurring fluorine/fluoride commpounds in tea leaves. Can something be added about this? Badagnani 06:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Second most popular"?

How do we know for sure that it is the second most popular drink in the world? Perhaps this should be backed up by a sound research report. —msikma <user_talk:msikma> 18:53, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Too many Links

Do you think we can cut out some of the Sea Also links some are unimportant and the list is way to long--Seadog.M.S 00:09, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Perhaps we should transfer some links to articles such as Tea culture or Iced tea. MKoltnow 22:43, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] advertisement for lipton?

the section on triangle tea bags looks like an advertisement for Lipton

It also doesn't provide a world view. In Britain triangle tea bags are marketed only by PG Tips. What is the situation in other countries? Who has criticised them for being environmentally unfriendly? 87.127.73.65 02:26, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] the indian factor

the inclusion of India and the history of tea in India has been grossly overlooked. This article is too China/East Asian -centric

I second this--Spyforthemoon 18:12, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

If you guys can get somebody to contribute the Indian section. --Sltan 13:43, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested merge of Tea#Tea_origin_and_early_history_in_Asia and Tea#Tea spreads to the world sections to History of tea

The following section was removed from the to-be-deleted Talk page of History of tea. Nearly a year of discussion has yielded no results, so the empty page is being deleted. Please feel free to be bold and recreate History of tea should this discussion conclude that splitting the indicated sections out is the proper course. — Saxifrage ✎ 04:21, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vote

  • Support. LuiKhuntek 05:49, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose. In fact removal of core section of Tea to separate article is requested (History of tea is a very bad stub). I would reconsider when/if I see meaningful summary intended for Tea. --Wikimol 18:14, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. Tea article too long - would benefit from some sections being moved / merged to other articles, whilst of course maintaining suitable links from the main article, with summaries of the most important points. Jamse 17:57, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. This would also aid adding to the article. --Iateasquirrel 00:14, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Support I think the tea article needs a shorter but still substantial history section. If the full section is turned into the History of Tea article and the section in the Tea article is shortened, I think it will add to readability • Leon 12:22, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Support I agree, the main tea article is unwieldy, and the history of tea is such a big subject. mjolsnes 10 August 2006
  • Support The tea article has grown too long. Splitting out of the history is a sensible response.--Simon Speed 21:14, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Support I think that 'History of tea' deserves its own article, but I agree with Wikimol, this article needs to be finished off properly!--SAS87 16:26, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discuss

The "Tea" article is too long and the bulk of the history of tea (except for the sections specific to China or Japan) can easily be moved to "History of tea" while leaving a summary in the main article. LuiKhuntek 05:49, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

@Jamse I agree some extraordinary long sections could be moved to separate articles and replaced by good summaries - if these are availiable (Tea culture). But this proposed move just does not make sense now

  • the section History of tea is in average too brief
  • especially its subsection Tea spreads to the world misses many important points and is shorter than it should be in "the ideal Tea article"
  • History of tea in China and Japan allready have specific articles and content of Tea is more or less succesfull attempt at summarization creating of Tea culture would create three levels of details/summarization of the same topis (Tea, Tea history, Tea hisotry in specific countries). we should not start maintaining three different levels of the same text when we don't have decent text on any level of details --Wikimol 20:22, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Does this mean the history section used to be longer? I find it fairly overwhelming as it currently stands. Not to mention East-Asia centric (India gets relatively little play). Are there current objections to relocating material to the sub-pages (history of tea, chinese history of tea... I don't know them all) and leaving short sumaries here? Or could I get started on that?--Spyforthemoon 18:20, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


  • The article Tea Culture is very sloppy at the moment and it repeats a lot of what's in Tea (main article). Tea Culture is incomplete with reguards to Tea Etiquette. I think Tea (main article) should only contain solid facts about the substance with other aspects being covered in seperate articles.--SAS87 16:31, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. Improving the Tea culture and Iced tea articles might help us slim down the Tea article by moving material there. MKoltnow 22:43, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tea Trade history

Tea trading is started since Tang (618-907)dynasty, between Tang dynasty and Tibet via tea and horse caravan road
Marco polo should be taken out from "Tea spreads to the world", since it is irrelevant to the whole articles.

[edit] Caffeine

Does the average cup of tea REALLY contain 40mg of caffeine??

Take a look at caffeine. The sources cited there, however, namely the Nutrition Action Newsletter and Erowid (who in turn cites Caffeine Blues by Stephen Cherniske, M.S. and Bunker and McWilliams in J Am Diet 74:28-32, 1979) show that the caffeine content of teas varies greatly according to the type of tea and the manner of its preparation, but a rough estimate of 40mg isn't way off. – ClockworkSoul 22:16, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] why the spam tag?

I have checked the external links, and do not understand why that section was tagged possible spam. I would like to remove the tag, but maybe I'm missing something. I suspect it may have to do with the link I added yesterday, but really, I can't tell if that site is commercial; it's just informational. Sean Lotz talk 19:51, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I followed all the links. The only one I found questionable was the Luzianne link. Even so, it is specifically a link to trivia about iced tea, not just the main Luzianne page. I don't consider this to be a link to an advertisement, even though the site is commercial in nature. I am going to go ahead and clear the spam tag. MKoltnow 22:43, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Can someone recommend a good strong tea?

This article is lacking the names of some strong teas. Can someone suggest a few? -- AS Artimour 03:23, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] See also

IMO "See also" would benefit from removal of most of links. In it's surrent form it looks like a random sample from [[Category:Tea]] --Wikimol 12:44, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

That's true, but how would you go about choosing what to remove? Tea as a topic covers a lot of stuff. Sjschen 17:07, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Mainly point to lists - for example List of teas, List of tea companies, Tea ceremony... if suitable lists/general articles don't exist, they may be worth creating. (I thought about categories, but can't find someting equivalent to "List of teas" in some meaningful order)
Exclude obscure connections, Anna Russel may be important for Tea (meal) or tea culture og Britain, but I doubt it's useful to link to her from here. --Wikimol 23:10, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Links

I presume the links in the intro were removed because they led to a commercial site but ... if you look at the specific pages linked they had only info of direct relevance to this article (a definition of the types of tea); there was no commercial marketing etc on those pages. Incidentally I have no personal link to this company I simply found them by googling. IMHO these links are very worthwhile and should be reinstated. On second thoughts I will put them lower down as a citation for the definitions in the body of this article since I note there are no citations; in fact there aren't many in the whole article. Unless of course anyone proffers a good reaon why I shouldn't. Abtract 23:29, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I removed the links. They were not wildly inappropriate. As you say, the pages themselves were informational, not commercial. But, it seems they did not adequately add pertinent information which could not be gotten in the appropriate WP articles; they are commercial sites, which I would rather not see linked to especially in the body of the article itself (personally, I would give greater leeway to links in the external links section at the bottom); and I think (this is opinion) that references provided to back up claims should generally be non-commercial sites. I won't delete them again if you want to re-add them. I made my point, and it's not a point worth fighting for. I'm easy with it; somebody else may share my same perspective and take them out again, but that's somebody else's business. And you are right: the lack of citations is not good. Sadly, a lot of WP suffers from that. But who am I to complain? I am horrible that way, myself. I do appreciate the attempt. Sean Lotz talk 01:06, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for that. The problem is that the other WP articles for black, green tea etc also do not give any citations for the basic definitions. Normally I would avoid commercial sites and indeed strike them on occasions but these were the best pages I could find. I probably will put them back somewhere suitable but I will also look for better refs. Abtract 01:20, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
My favorite source for tea definitions is also my favorite tea merchant. Upton Tea has a section called "Information" with an "Online Tea Dictionary." They give the sources for their definitions. But they don't seem to have a definition for "black tea." Sean Lotz talk
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