Tea Chronicles: Diffence between Tea, Infusion, Tisane.

Did you know Tea can be machine made and handmade. Most of the areas in India do not use machine to pluck the Tea leaves. Early morning, the tea pluckers walk through the tea bushes to find the way and pluck the tea leaves nimbly, seeing, discerning what is meant to be plucked and what can still be left behind either to grow or ignore. There are some areas in Assam and Kangra that do have machines to pluck the leaves. 
Once the leaves have been plucked, it can either be manufactured which means it goes through the process going through machines and eventually it is sorted through meshes and then packaged. The other way of making tea is handmade process where in the leaves are hand plucked, sun dried and then packaged. There is no contact with any sort of machine. This helps to retain more antioxidants and is marginally more delicate in flavor and aroma as well as the cup. 

An infusion or blend could be a blend of various grades of teas or the blended or sommelier could have a certain tea in mind and add various dried ingredients such as flowers, herbs, spices or fruits to the tea. 

If there is no camelia sinensis or tea leaves but just flowers or herbs or a mix of flowers, herbs and spices it is termed as tisane. Hence if a box has on it 'Chamomile tea' written but in reality there is no camelia sinensis / tea leaves in it, it cannot be termed as tea. This is a tisane. 
Know your terminology to be able to understand the product better and in the process make a choice of what you like or do not like. 

 

 


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