Your guide to the many colours of tea
The Europeans named black tea for its dark oxidised leaves. In China, it is ‘hong cha’ or red tea, named after the colour of the liquor. Whereas green tea is not oxidised, indicating still green leaf, and white tea is named for the downy hair on the buds after it has been processed
My 13-year-old has taken to sharing Reels on the absurdities of language and how it can confuse one terribly if you’re a new learner trying to grasp the rules. Like how “height" and “weight" are pronounced in English, or how “French fries" may not actually be French. Every language seems to take a jibe at another. They are good for a laugh. And even as I chuckled, I thought about how tea suffers from a similar confusion in its many names and what they actually mean. It rang home as I set out to brew a yellow and a purple tea this weekend.
Let’s start with black tea. The Europeans called it black tea for its dark oxidised leaves. In China, it is hong cha—red tea—named for the colour of the liquor. So, is the tea named for the plant or the cup? Or the leaves? It depends on the tea.
Green tea is not oxidised, indicating still green leaf. The liquor itself ranges from yellow-hued to yellow-green to green (like matcha). White tea is named for the downy hair on the buds after the tea has been processed. Many assume the name refers to the liquor colour—often judging it as overrated pale water. It’s not. The liquor is creamy yellow and rather striking even in its subtlety.
In the classification of tea, yellow tea is actually a green tea variant because, like green tea, it’s not oxidised. There’s an additional step of menghuang, where leaves are wrapped in small batches under precisely controlled times and temperatures. This “sweating" mellows the flavour: less vegetal, more sweet, gently earthy. I am trying a yellow tea. I steeped mine a little strong; it smells warm, like hay. But more brown-yellow than sunshine.
And there’s purple tea. This Assamica varietal underwent a mutation increasing anthocyanins—seen in purple cabbage and carrots—turning its leaves purple. Although the varietal originates in China’s Yunnan, and Assam, Kenya took to cultivating and marketing it more aggressively from 2011. Today, we see some Indian purple teas. And while the purple leaves are noticeable in the plant, you see only hints of it in an otherwise yellowish cup that turns purple with the addition of lime. Adding to the confusion is the entry of the butterfly pea flower that makes a blue cup turn purple with lime. A different plant, a different brew.
But, we have our own blue tea—the oolong. Though its name translates to “black dragon", it’s sometimes called blue or blue-green tea. Why? Who knows… a story lost in translation.
This colour conundrum has been both good and bad. On one hand, it simplifies tea types into broad categories. On the other, it has led to adulteration issues, with unscrupulous traders adding colour to tea. Still, it has inspired Pantone to name some of its colours after tea—Green Tea, Rooibos, Chai Tea. Perhaps that’s what we really need—a shade card of the full tea colour spectrum.
Tea Nanny is a fortnightly series on the world of tea. Aravinda Anantharaman is a tea drinker, writer and editor. She posts @AravindaAnanth1
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