Only a taste will tell if you agree with the experts who insist that loose leaves make a far superior cup of tea.
But if you're thinking of making the switch from bagged to loose, here is a greatly abbreviated primer from the Tea Association of the U.S. (teausa.com), a Manhattan-based industry group.
Health benefits. The "it's-good-for-you" approach doesn't always work when getting people to explore new tastes, but the Tea Association says the number of scientific studies showing tea's health properties has increased from three to more than 900 in the last 20 years.
Peggy Stephens, who runs Premium Steap on South 18th Street in Center City, says she suspects the health benefits may be overrated, but the relaxation factor is not.
Types, varieties, sources. Tea comes in basic black, oolong, green and white, and stems, so to speak, from one plant, Camellia sinensis, which is grown throughout the world but particularly thrives in Asia.
(Herbal tea is not from that plant. It is a mix of leaves, roots, bark, seeds or flowers. And while research exists about the benefits of herbs, that's different from the research on traditional teas. And "red tea" or rooibos is an herbal tea from the African red bush plant.)
Like wines, teas can be said to have terroir, distinctive tastes determined by geography.
The four basic types are differentiated by how the fresh-picked leaves are fermented or oxygenated. Green tea, for example, is not oxidized at all; black oxidizes for two to four hours; oolong falls somewhere in the middle; and white, which is made from the unopened leaves of the plant, is the least processed type of tea.
From those four come thousands of varieties. Darjeeling is a black tea grown in the Himalayan Mountains in northern India; English Breakfast starts with black Keemun leaves from China, to which leaves from Ceylon and India are generally added.
