Session 03: Camellia sinensis basics ②: Nomenclature, crafting, brewing

Topics

❖ Tea nomenclature in China, Japan and the West
❖ Crafting (yellow; white, green, oolong, red, and black)
❖ Brewing

Thoughts—read before class, revisit for tests

I cover nomenclature in part because English is very loose with tea terms. "Fermentation" almost always means "oxidation" so be careful about that. Also, "black tea" or just "tea" in English usually means "red tea" (in Chinese designations). "Japanese tea" means "green tea" even though in fact there are lots of types of Japanese tea. For that matter "tea" in English means anything made by infusion (steeping) method. "Mint tea / herbal tea" is NOT tea, strictly speaking: it is steeped mint leaf. "Jasmine tea" IS tea; it is the c. sinensis plant with jasmine added as a fragrance.

There are a lot of details to this day. Understand the basic steps in the process of crafting, not every little thing, and the basic range of tea production, from "white" to "black".

The pages required below have a lot of information. Please spend 20-30 minutes looking over them, not just a quick glance. We come back to this information over and over again in class.

Required—to be completed for today's session

✓ Read Tea production steps: China [on site, HTML]

✓ Read Tea nomenclature: China [on site, HTML]

✓ Read Tea nomenclature: Japan [on site, HTML]

✓ Look over Tea crafting steps as flow chart [bSpace, PDF]. While I have not integrated this well into the class, ideally I would like to be returning to this as we cover the evolution of crafting techniques over the centuries. It might help keep things straight and, if done successfully, would be something I might want to include in a midterm or final. So, consider returning to this or printing it out and adding notes to it as we go along.

Multimedia notes

❖ DVD excerpts: "teance: the renaissance of tea" (F. Lit Yu directing, 2005)

• Gaiwan service
• brewing various teas with various tea wares
• teahouses

❖ DVD excerpts: Martin Yan's Hidden China: Episode #10 - For All the Teas in Western China

• Puer production in Yunnan
  

Links

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Other

Health benefits - Crafting links 1009 [bSpace, PPT] (This is a quick draft type file, basically just some notes.)

Tea crafting steps as flow chart [bSpace, PDF] is on bSpace in a misc. folder. That is the document I sometimes put on screen during this session.

Links to each session page

Sun, Sept 1, 2013: I am migrating this site to a new site. It takes time. During this transition, there are two ways to access a particular day's web page. You can start with the new EA109 Fall 2013 Course Guide page, our official top page. It will take you directly to the new pages and redirect to old pages when necessary. Or you can use the below chart. It will take you directly to the day's session page—the new one when it exists, the old one when it has yet to be migrated. Greenhighlight means the new page exists. Sorry for the dust and mess during construction!