Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring
hot or boiling water over cured or fresh leaves of Camellia sinensis, an
evergreen shrub native to China and East Asia. After water, it is the most
widely consumed drink in the world.
There are many different types of tea; some, like Chinese greens and
Darjeeling, have a cooling, slightly bitter, and astringent flavour, while
others have vastly different profiles that include sweet, nutty, floral,
or grassy notes. Tea has a stimulating effect in humans primarily due to
its caffeine content.
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Tea processing is the method in which
the leaves from the tea plant Camellia sinensis are transformed into the
dried leaves for brewing tea.
The categories of tea are distinguished by the processing they undergo. In
its most general form, tea processing involves different manners and
degrees of oxidation of the leaves, stopping the oxidation, forming the
tea and drying it.
The innate flavor of the dried tea leaves is determined by the type of
cultivar of the tea bush, the quality of the plucked tea leaves, and the
manner and quality of the production processing they undergo. After
processing, a tea may be blended with other teas or mixed with flavourants
to alter the flavor of the final tea.
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