Types of Tea: A Beginner’s Guide to Black, Green, White, Oolong and Herbal Teas

Chinese tradition counts six, adding yellow tea and dark teas such as pu-erh, but those two are rarely seen outside China. Everything else people call “tea,” from chamomile to rooibos, is an infusion of a different plant.

Four is also the number we teach our own team. Our training deck counts “4 broad categories of tea: Black, Oolong, White and Green,” all made from the leaves of the same plant.

This surprises almost everyone: all teas, whether black, white, oolong, green or CTC, come from the same tea plant.

One plant, more than one bush

The plant has two main varieties: the small-leaved China type and the large-leaved Assam type. Many Indian gardens also grow clonal bushes bred from the best of both.

The bush shows in the cup. Arun Kumar Gomden, the veteran Darjeeling tea maker and master taster who later worked with our tasting team, notes that the flavors of old Chinary bushes “differ significantly from place to place,” while clonals “more or less produce the same flavor profiles.”

The variety, the garden and the season all shape the flavor, but the type of tea is decided in the factory. More on the plant itself in What is tea?

Oxidation: the step that makes the difference

After plucking, a tea leaf is withered to soften it. If it is then rolled or bruised, its cells break and natural enzymes react with the air, turning the leaf darker and changing its flavor.

As our tasting team explains it, “chlorophyll is broken down to release tannins, similar to the browning of bananas, apples and other foods.” More exactly, an enzyme in the leaf turns its green catechins into orange and brown compounds.

The tea maker decides how far to let it go, then stops it with heat, a step called fixing:

• Green tea: stop it at once and you get green tea.
• White tea: skip rolling and simply wither and dry the leaf and you get white tea.
• Oolong: let it go part of the way and you get oolong.
• Black tea: let it run its full course and you get black tea.

Even black tea has degrees. Our 2017 training notes point out that a Darjeeling first flush is only partly oxidized, which is why so many spring Darjeelings look greenish.

Each step, from plucking and withering to rolling, oxidizing and drying, is covered in How tea is made: from leaf to cup.

Here is the tea types list at a glance. Use about 2 to 2.5 g of leaf (roughly one heaped teaspoon) per 250 ml (8 oz) cup, then adjust. Our tasters are stricter still: every tasting sample is weighed at exactly 2.5 g, not 2.4 g or 2.6 g.

Our training deck describes the cup colors more finely: white tea runs from Champagne to light gold, green from pale green to yellowish green, oolong from light gold to gold, and black from light gold to dark amber. An Assam with milk turns a bright yellowish orange.

Caffeine

Caffeine figures are from our Tea 101 caffeine guides. For comparison, they put a cup of coffee at about 90 to 95 mg, and a cup of masala chai at about the same as black tea, since it is black tea.

Caffeine varies with the leaf, how much you use, the water temperature and how long you steep.

Brewing Darjeeling and Assam

Darjeeling black teas are the exception to the boiling-water rule:

• First flush: brew a first flush at 85–90°C (185–195°F) for 3 to 4 minutes.
• Second flush: brew a second flush at 90–95°C (195–203°F) for 3 to 5 minutes.
• Autumn flush: brew an autumn flush at 90–95°C for 4 to 5 minutes.

Assam takes water just off the boil and welcomes milk.

If any tea tastes bitter, the water was too hot or it steeped too long. For more strength, add leaf rather than time. White teas and oolongs reward a second steep: our 2017 notes call multiple steeping “a win win,” and suggest clear glass cups so you can watch the color.

Each region has its strengths:

The regions also differ in how they make tea. Darjeeling tea is all orthodox, while Assam makes both CTC and orthodox. The Nilgiris make both too, with twirled black teas, whites and oolongs. In Kangra, the Dharmsala Tea Company told us it makes all four base teas, black, green, oolong and white, along with its own blends.

Darjeeling sells most of what it makes abroad: more than 80% of its roughly 8.5 million kg a year is exported.

Smaller regions worth knowing

Beyond the big four, we buy from smaller gardens across the Northeast.

Temi, Sikkim’s estate, was set up by the Government of Sikkim in 1969 and covers 177 hectares; our Sikkim Temi Spring Chinary Black comes from there. Its teas are neither as brisk as Assam nor as light as Darjeeling. In Meghalaya, Lakyrsiew sits at about 4,000 feet on the southern bank of Umiam Lake and makes our Lakyrsiew Summer Clonal Black.

In Arunachal Pradesh, the Donyi Polo estate, founded in 1985, is known for aromatic silver needles and golden tippy teas.

Teabox sources from 250+ Indian tea estates and ships direct from India, and every tea is tasted and selected in Siliguri before it is listed.

For how Indian and Chinese teas differ in style, see Indian vs Chinese tea; for each growing area, see Indian tea regions.