What are the differences between green tea and regular tea?
There are four main types of tea commonly found on the market: black tea, oolong tea, green tea and white tea. All of them are made using leaves from the same plant, Camellia Sinensis, but the leaves are processed differently to produce each type of tea.
Black tea is traditionally the most popular of the four in western countries, although green tea is now catching up in terms of popularity, since knowledge of its many health benefits is becoming more widely known. Black tea differs from the others because it goes through a process of oxidization. The leaves are first withered, so that the moisture content is reduced by up to 70%, making them limp and easily rolled – the rolling is usually done by machinery, forcing them to crack open so that the enzymes within are exposed to oxygen. Oxidization then occurs – basically, the chemical reaction that takes place changes the properties of the leaves, and also darkens the color from green to various shades of brown, depending on how long they are allowed to oxidize. The leaves are then dried to complete the process.
Oolong tea, then, is somewhere in between black tea and green tea, in that the leaves do go through the oxidization process, but are stopped before they go as far as black tea. It is said that oolong tea was invented by accident, when a man named Wu Lung (hence the tea name) became distracted on his return from a day of tea picking. By the time he remembered about the leaves he'd gathered, they had already begun to oxidize, and so oolong tea was born! The taste of these semi-oxidized teas is more like green tea than black tea, but they don't contain the most obvious flavors of either. That is to say, the sweet charateristics of black tea are not present in oolong tea, but nor are the fresh, grassy vegetal flavors of green tea.
Green tea comes next in the list. It's different from black and oolong tea because it is not allowed to oxidize at all – or at least, every effort is made to ensure that it only undergoes minimal oxidization. Oxidization can be stopped by heating the leaves, so this is done as soon after picking as possible in order to make green tea. In Japan, the method used to do this is steaming, while in China, it's done by pan firing (not frying!) the leaves. Because the leaves are not allowed to oxidize, they retain their natural enzymes and vegetal qualities. This is why green tea is widely known to have multiple health benefits – and also why it tastes fresh and grassy!
White tea completes the chain. Similar to green tea, the difference here is that only the very youngest tea leaves and buds are picked, while green tea usually uses more mature leaves. The main difference between green tea and white tea is that white tea has a slightly higher caffeine content than green tea, because of the age of the leaves, and also tastes somewhat stronger.
Useful Links:
http://www.farsinet.com/hottea/greenblacktea.html
http://www.whiteteacentral.com/whiteteavsgreen.html
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