What is tea?

Tea almost exclusively comes from a small evergreen shrub called Camellia sinensis. Shrubs are a bit like trees but smaller with more stems.

The tea plant produces flowers like other camellias known as “winter beauties.”

The plant originally came from China or Myanmar.

Currently, there are two main varieties of this species, the small-leaf Chinese variety and the Assam variety.

The most common way to harvest tea is by plucking two leaves and one bud from the plants, often in the spring when they are lighter and more delicate than the leaves around them.

Tea leaves contain about 3% caffeine. Unlike coffee, however, tea leaves contain small amounts of theobromine, which takes longer to metabolize and causes stimulation more slowly than caffeine. This could be the reason for the more mild and more sustained mood-boosting effects of tea compared to coffee.

After the tea is plucked it will either wilt or oxidize. It is dried after these processes and either retained as full leaves or crushed. Teas may be blended, flavored, decaffeinated, or scented before packaging and sale.

Teas can be stored in cakes, loose-leaf, bags, rods, powders, cans, and bottles.

The tea you find here is chosen to be high-quality, seasonal, and small batch :)