Green Tea Time

You’ve heard all the hype about green tea. Well, if you’re living in the modern world, who hasn’t? So what is the best green tea to implement into your life? Does anyone really know? The truth is that everyone has their preference and choosing the best green tea is a matter of preference as far as brands are concerned, but you deserve to know what to look for when making your choice. Here are some things for you to consider.

The best green tea and/or healthiest green tea you can buy is always made of the first two leaves and the bud from the tea plant. However, the quality of an estate’s green tea crop varies from year to year. One year the green tea could be award winning and the next it may not be quite as excellent.
Often, the highest quality green tea never actually makes it out of China and Japan or ends up being for sale to the public. Often the best green tea is kept in the producing country and/or sold to private bidders.

The highest quality green tea is also picked in the early spring meaning March or April when the sun is not so hot. Typically you will want to get your hands on the first flush and second flush of the year. The leaves are young and tender and not ?roasted?by the hot summer sun.

You will also find that single-estate green tea is better quality and healthier as well. This means that the green tea leaves were all picked from the same estate and harvest. When you buy green tea blended from various plantations, it often means the quality of each green tea is not as good and they try to hide / mask the poor quality. You are better off buying a single-estate green tea for the best green tea.

That being said there is a lot of high quality green tea on the market. You usually end up paying a premium for it and most of it can be found online. It’s generally a great idea to buy your tea online, but if you can find a quality health food store where you are allowed to taste before buying, go that route, for sure!

Rather than focusing on the best green tea or the healthiest green tea, often you have to find a green tea you enjoy. No matther how good or how healthy the green tea, you have to like it. Some teas are a bit more vegetal / earthy in flavor while others are more subtle. Often the partially-shaded green tea from Japan, like Gyokuro Green Tea or Sencha Green Tea, are more vegetal in flavor. The cup is a bright, clear lime green and somewhat earthy and healthy to the taste.

Truly, the best green tea is the green tea that you enjoy and that works best in your dietary plan. Any way you choose, implementing green tea into your life will increase your well-being and your quality of life!

Before accidentally turned into ‘black’ during its transportation in the 17th century, tea had no color. However, despite that, green tea has a long and wonderful history. Green tea has been around for hundreds of centuries, dating back in Chinese literature as far as 5,000 years ago! It dates back to 2737 BC based on some Chinese legends, stories and some literature.

A man known as Shien Non Shei found the plant, and tasted a leaf from it. He thought it tasted fantastic, and decided to mix it with water to make a drink out of it. He also thought that the plant had medicinal properties. Another story says that the Emperor, Shen Nung, came upon the tea when a leaf from the plant fell into a cup of hot water he was drinking at the time.

The brew that can be called tea appeared around the 2nd century in China, when sun-dried green leaves were chopped and boiled as a drink, the earliest green tea. In the 7th century, the ancient Chinese began to prepare their tea into the shape of pie. Steamed, molded and baked dry, the pie was smashed by a roller and boiled at tea time. Pie tea was popular for a long period until banned by Emperor Hongwu in 1391.

Tea was introduced to Korea at the end of the 4th century along with Buddhism. In 805 AD, a returned Japanese monk brought with him the seeds of tea from Mt. Tiantai of Zhejiang Province and planted the first tea in Japan. (Japan has only green tea and tea-makers still use Chinese steaming method today).

When pie tea was replaced by loose leaf tea, roasting method replaced steaming method in Chinese tea production. There were 58 recorded well-known teas at that time. In 15 of them still in production today, 13 teas are green teas.

In 1673, England imported Chinese green tea for the first time. After the franchise of tea importing being suspended by a Chinese emperor, England started tea plantations in India.

Green tea has been used in China as a healthy, medicinal drink for approximately 5,000 years. Green tea was the drink of choice among the leaders and the wealthy. The tea leaves were used fresh from the plant for tea brewing, lightly heat processed, or even eaten right away. In ancient China, tea was a costly drink, consumed only by the rich and wealthy of the population. However, following the fall of the Mongolian Empire back in 1368 AD, the whole population of China began to experience the wonderful consumption of tea, including green tea.

Between 1405 and 1433, when China had the power of the sea, the seamen were given the necessary amount of green tea. The antioxidants in the green tea they drank fought off scurvy, which killed many Europeans sailors several years later.

Tea consumption was introduced to the United States by Europe, as a part of the worldwide tea trade, and also by Chinese immigrants who owned Chinese restaurants in the United States