Ingredients

tea leaves

Also known as “tea bags”. Tea leaves are the dried, processed leaves and/or buds and/or twigs of the cultivated tea plant. All true tea comes from the same tea plant, but the nature of the product varies wildly depending on where the plant in question is grown, how and when it is harvested, how the leaves and sorted and selected, how they are dried and processed, and ultimately, how they are packaged, transported and marketed. Tea can be broadly classified as white (simply dried/minimally processed), green (kiln dried), oolong (partially oxidied), black/red (fully oxidized) and pu-ehr (aged). Numerous examples of flavored teas also exist, where the leaves have been perfumed and/or other flavoring botanicals are blended with the tea leaves. Most tea is grown in China, India, Japan and Ceylon. Southeast Asia and Africa have increasingly important tea growing regions as well. Note: for lack of a better term—“tisane” never caught on—the word “tea” is often used to describe dried botanicals that are not tea but can be similarly infused in water. For example, “mint tea” is an infusion of fresh or dried mint leaves, but it contains no tea leaves and is not actually tea.