5 teas to enjoy in the rains!

Curl up on the sofa and start sipping...here's how to brew the most flavourful and aromatic teas this season

The monsoon is here, and there's nothing like a steaming hot cup of tea to accompany the softly falling rain. While tea (also known as nature's tranquiliser) is best had in its most popular avatar - black with milk and sugar - here are other interesting ways to enjoy it ...

1) Rose tea

Rose tea, made by mixing fresh roses and terminal bud of the tea, is probably the oldest flavoured teas available. The tea is known for its subtle taste. There are several benefits that it has. It can beautify the skin, clearing it of toxins and contains vitamins A, B3, C, D and E. Rose tea also acts as a cure for sore throat.

How to brew: Put 10 rosebuds into a cup (should have below-boiling water). You may brew this for as long as you like, a shorter time results in lighter tea. Use no sugar or cream as the flavour is best had natural.

2) White tea

This is a mild, fresh tea, one of the least-processed types. It is said to contain three times as many antioxidants as green tea. A study says white tea can preserve the skin's natural collagen, and another points out how it speeds up the fat-burning process.

How to brew: The first thing to remember is that hard water can ruin white tea, which has delicate a flavour. Boil water to about 158oF to 167oF and pour it over the tea leaves. Steeping time can be for about 10 minutes. Serve as it is, without milk or sugar.

3) Cinnamon tea

You can enjoy the many benefits of cinnamon tea whether you love a pure cinnamon tea or prefer it blended or added to other teas. Sweet, soothing, spicy, and a little bit exotic... Cinnamon is versatile and much-loved, a favorite not only in sweet and savory dishes, but in tea, as well!

The well-known spice is famous for its ease in blending with a variety of flavors - with other teas, spices, fruits, and herbs - to create intoxicating tea blends.

4) Tulsi tea

One of the most important benefits of this tea is that it can cure stress. Tulsi can be calming and is said to lessen abdominal pain. Having a little after a meal helps to relax the muscles of the intestinal tract. The tea is light and refreshing.

How to brew: Buy some fresh tulsi from any grocery. Boil water and place tulsi leaves inside a teapot. Pour the boiling water into the teapot and let steep for about three minutes. Enjoy it hot.

5)Chamomile tea

Part of the daisy family, chamomile tea was grown by ancient Egyptians to treat a wide variety of ailments. The ingredients in this tea are said to have anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial properties. It is also said to relieve fatigue and is considered a cure for insomnia.

How to brew: Place a sachet of dried chamomile into a cup. Boil water and cool it for 20 seconds, then pour it over the chamomile. Cover and let it steep for about 5-7 minutes. Strain and sip. The flavor will be sweet and soothing.

Try these teas today at The Tea Shelf.

The World’s Most Expensive Teas

A cup of Earl Grey’s breakfast tea may be one of the preferred beverages in the United Kingdom, but the world’s most expensive teas offer a much more exquisite flavour profile. While tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world, with approximately three billion cups per day, the difference between the massively produced product and the refined variations is enormous. Not only does their cultivating and processing method vary, so does the flavour intensity. The addition of herbs and blending of different tea extracts can modify your drinking experience, as well as the price tag.

6. Gyokuro Tea

Price: $650 per kilogram

Gyokuro, which means “jewel dew”, is a shaded, pale green tea, with an intense aroma and specific processing method. Often classified as the unshaded Chinese tea Sencha, these leaves are shaded from the sun for two weeks prior to harvesting them, in order to increase the amino-acid levels in the final product, giving it a distinctive taste.

5. Poo Poo Pu-Erh Tea

Price: $1,000 per kilogram

Yes, the name is as revealing as you would think, since this fermented tea is infused with the feces of several insects. Given that the only thing they eat is tea leaves, their droppings add to the concentrated flavour of this energizing concoction. Originating from the 18th century, when Chinese doctors in the Yunnan region found the Pu-Erh to have medicinal properties and thereby offered it as a gift to Emperor Qianlong, this tea has stood the test of time. Today, its meticulous preparation method makes it one of the most expensive on the market.

4. Yellow Gold Tea Buds

Price: $3,000 per kilogram

Maybe one of the trickiest teas to get your hands on, but definitely one that’s worth the effort, Yellow Gold Tea Buds is produced by the TWG Tea Company and only sold in Singapore. What makes it so special is its limited production: one day per year, tea pickers hike up to one specific area on a specific mountain and cut the superior part of the tea tree with golden scissors, in an almost ceremonial way. After being sundried, the buds are stored in containers in order to release the polyphenols that give them their yellow colour and particular flowery aroma. In honour of the name, the leaves are then painted in 24 carat gold.

3. Panda Dung Tea

Price: $70,000 per kilogram

Once again, one of the world’s most expensive teas features animal droppings. In this case, however, the panda excrement isn’t in the tea leaves itself, but used as fertilizer for the tea trees instead. Since panda’s only eat bamboo, relieving 70% of the nutrients through their feces, this gives the tea a highly defined flavour, one that tea lovers are willing to pay a fortune for.

2. PG Tips Diamond Tea Bag

Price: $15,000 per tea bag

While these limited edition tea bags are filled with the most expensive Darjeeling tea in the world – Silver Tips Imperial Tea from the Makibari Estate – its real value is in the packaging. In honour of the British tea company PG Tips’ 75th anniversary (in 2005), they created the diamond studded tea bag, featuring 280 diamonds, and handcrafted by Boodles jewellery. Talk about a luxury beverage!

1. Da-Hong Pao Tea

Price: $1.2 million per kilo

A valued Chinese national treasure, this legendary tea is a well-kept secret and only given as a gift to dignitaries and honourable visitors. It’s said that a Ming Dynasty emperor was cured by this tea, and so his men went in search of the source, finding only four bushes on top of Mount Wuyi. Although Da-Hong Pao tea is very difficult to find for sale, its whopping price of $1.2 million for a kilogram makes it the emperor of the world’s most expensive teas.

Turks and Tea!

After China and India, the world's two most populous countries, Turkey is third in tea consumption in the world. However, Turkey consumes the most tea if theamount is measured in proportion to the population. Based on data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the average annual tea consumption per person worldwide is less than 1 kilogram, but in Turkey each person consumes an average of more than 3 kilograms of tea every year.

In China, an average of 1.6 million tons of tea per year is consumed, while India comes a close second with almost 1 million tons in consumption. Turkey ranks third with around 240,000 tons of tea consumption per year. When it comes to tea production, Turkey is the fifth country on the list of highest tea producers, at 220,000 tons per year. China remains at the top of the list of producers worldwide, with almost 2 million tons of tea produced, followed by India, Sri Lanka and Kenya.

Çaykur, a Turkish tea production company, accounts for 60 percent of the Turkish tea sector and sold almost 5,000 tons of tea to 54 countries last year. The company sells tea to dozens of countries, including Australia, Kosovo, Mongolia and Saudi Arabia.

A large amount of the tea produced in Turkey tea is cultivated on the country's Black Sea coast. Two months ago, a training initiative for professional tea testers began so that they could better promote traditional Turkish tea, the country's most popular beverage. This was part of a project by the Rize Commodity Exchange Market. The training, which is given by tea experts, includes theory and practice classes that instruct participants on key information regarding tea's color, aromatic features, and the appearance of processed tea and strong tea.

The benefits of appropriate usage of caffeine and the side effects of chronic over-dosage

People are giving up coffee for tea. One popular reason is for reducing caffeine intake. There could be a couple hundred mg of caffeine in the cuppa while it can be as little as 1 mg in tea.

Before we go further to discuss this topic, however, the reader has to be aware that moderate intake of caffeine is not a bad idea for most people. Especially for those who know how to use fine teas for their caffeine content.

detox, fight alzheimer’s and fatty deposits

After all, the presence of methylxanthines in tea, such as caffeine and theobromine, not only keeps you alert, but may very well help fight Alzheimer’s disease. Caffeine also relaxes the bronchial smooth muscle in the air tract, and therefore helps breathing. The materials are also diuretic. Passing waste liquids is critical in detoxification. The presence of theobromine is also associated with preventing formation of fatty cells in the human body. It is therefore a contributive element in tea’s health effects for waist line control and prevention for cardiovascular diseases.

Much work is still needed for a usable database of the caffeine contents of various teas. Tea type and quality have systematically been made unclear in most surveys and researches regarding health related contents in tea. Anyway, there can still be an average of 40 mg of it in the cup of green tea; so why is it that people feel much better drinking tea?

caffeine works in synergy with others

A key may lie in tea’s other key contents: polyphenols and theanine. Especially abundant in green tea, epigallocatechin 3-gallate (EGCG or EGC3G) is found to be the most potent tea polyphenols for anti-oxidative, anti-mutagenic and anti-pathogenic effects. Scientists isolating this substance from green tea for experiments discovered that it is often bonded with caffeine to form larger particles. Some found that the two substances working together would be much more effective in the said preventive functions, particularly in burning more calories and preventing cancer.

liver health

Caffeine intake protects the liver. It works better together with green tea catechin for synergic effectiveness. It has been found that the intake of catechins in its pure extract form does not show the same high effectiveness as in drinking green tea, with its caffeine content. This is one more reason tea drinking as a habit is far more helpful for your health than taking supplements.

calm and focused

While coffee keeps you awake and tense, tea helps to stay calm and focused. Theanine, another key salutary element unique in tea, plays an important role. It has been proven that the material effectively calms the person by working as a facilitator in signal transmission between nerve cells. This relaxing effect balances out the tenseness that may have brought about by caffeine. That is why while both coffee and tea help you to stay alert, tea has a very different and much more desirable effect.

better bones

Some people would also be concerned of caffeine causing the loss of calcium in the bones. There have been findings that people with coffee habits have a tendency of bone problems in older age. Some scientists therefore hypothesize that all beverages with caffeine should be avoided. There are other studies that prove tea to be contributive to stronger bones, though. A study in Australia involving 1,500 women between the age of 70 to 85 concluded that tea drinking helps preservation of hip bone structure in older women. In other words, prevention of osteosclerosis, not uncommon in the post-menopause population. Similar studies in the Netherlands, UK, Turkey, Iran, Japan and China have all point to the beneficial effects of tea in preventing bone problems such as osteoporosis. The hypothesis that tea would cause bone weakening as would coffee, therefore, does not have a strong ground. The positive effects, however, are caused by EGCG and quercetin (a kind of flavonols) rather than by caffeine.

There are, however, cases of acquired osteosclerosis or fluorosis because of chronic exposure to fluoride in tea. Fluoride is typically higher in over-grown tealeaves. Over-growns are used by large scale farms to make low quality tea products, such as commercial grade tea bags, bottled drinks and instant mixes. Exceptionally large quantity of consumption of such products may lead to the named side effects.

TEA FACTS FROM A TO Z

26 THINGS YOU DID NOT KNOW ABOUT TEA!

Astrotea. You can use tea leaves to read the future. Just leave a small amount of tea in the bottom of the cup along with some tea leaves, and after stirring the remains three times, the pattern you’re left with will tell you what’s in store. In Asia, readers of tea leaves are just as respected as astrologers.

Bags. Tea bags were invented in America in the early 1800s, and were initially used to hold samples of teas brought from India. Today, 96% of all cups of tea served around the world were made using teabags.

Camellia sinensis. There are many different kinds of tea, but they are all derived from just one plant: Camellia sinensis. The color and variety of the tea (green, black, white, oolong) depends, however, on the way the leaves are treated.

Darjeeling. It’s called the champagne of tea: a black tea, it is grown in the eponymous area of Indian Bengal. One of the world’s most highly-prized tea varieties, teas are often falsely sold as coming from this area: for every 400 tons of tea sold under this name every year, only 100 tons actually comes from Darjeeling. 

Elevenses. At 11 o’clock in the morning, to stay alert, in England it’s common to take a break with a cup of tea and some cakes: Elevenses. Before dinner, however, you can take ‘high tea’: a kind of reinforced snack.

Food. You can’t have a cup without something to go with it: from cookies and English cucumber sandwiches to seafood accompanied by green tea in Japan, by way of spicy Indian meat dishes, and all-chocolate desserts from Assam.

Gin. Mix gin and cold tea, flavor with little lemon rind, and you’ll get a great summer cocktail. In the mid 1700s, in Great Britain, tea replaced gin as the drink of the masses, and became the nation’s favorite beverage.

Hot or cold. Perfect when drunk steaming hot, tea is also one of the most thirst-quenching summer drinks when drunk cold, perhaps with ice, and possibly some lemon, lime or leaves of mint to add flavor.

India. After tourism, the cultivation of tea is India’s second largest industry. And India tea is the variety most commonly drunk the world over, despite the fact that it originally came from China. 

Joan Cusack. «Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea? Me?» is one of cinema’s best-known quotes. It’s the famously cheeky line uttered by Joan Cusack to Harrison Ford in the classic film Working Girl.

Kettle. You won’t find a kitchen in England without one: the kettle, used to boil the water for tea, can be either electric or heated up on the hob. 

Loose tea. Loose tea is, for connoisseurs, the best way to taste tea: the quality of the tea leaves, which are often whole, and not broken up as in tea bags, is often higher, and retains more of their original flavor.

Mosquitoes. Tea leaves are a natural means of keeping mosquitoes away. All you have to do is use slightly damp leaves to add the scent of tea to the areas you want to keep insect-free.

Not just for drinking. Here are five good reasons for not giving up tea, even if you don’t drink it - it helps to heal shaving cuts, eliminates bad odors when added to a foot bath, can be used to marinade meat, is a great fertilizer for roses, and is also good for cleaning floors.

Oolong. Oolong tea, a Chinese and Taiwanese tea with a fruity aroma, is also often called Dragon’s Tea: these tea leaves, when put in teapot, often start to look like a dragon. The world’s most expensive tea is an oolong tea: it’s called Tieguanyin, and its leaves cost up to $3,000 per kilo.

Party. The Tea Party is the American political movement which calls for less state intervention in key areas like the economy and healthcare. Its name harks back to the Boston Tea Party, an act of protest carried out in the 1700s when Americans rebelled against the British government, destroying cases of tea which had arrived from India.

Quotes. «Women are like tea bags. They do not know how strong they are until they get into hot water.» - Eleanor Roosevelt.

Ritz Carlton of Hong Kong. This is where the world’s most expensive afternoon tea is drunk – you can spend up to $8,888 dollars here. You can taste the world’s best teas, finger food, fantastic cakes and enjoy the best view of the city.

Samovar. In Russia, the water for tea is boiled using a samovar. They were initially heated using coal, but these days usually run on electricity. They’re traditional, common household items found in Russia, Iran and Turkey.

Theanine. The stimulant found in tea leaves is theanine, an antioxidant whose equivalent in coffee is caffeine. Tea, however, contains less caffeine than coffee: around half the amount.

The London Tea Auctionwas an institution which lasted for 300 years. Tea was sold using the ‘by the candle’ system: bidding for lots went on until an inch of a candle had burnt away.

Vitamins. Tea is a natural antioxidant, and rich in vitamins: it contains vitamins B2, B1 and B6. Tea, however, is also rich in potassium, manganese, folic acid and calcium.

Water. Experts have always advised on the best kind of water for making tea. In early Chinese texts we can find suggestions that the best water should be taken from rivers and lakes.

X-rated. Amongst the many thousands of qualities that tea can boast, it has relaxing effects that can help improve your sex life. In particular,Ashwagandha tea is regarded as a stimulant to virility.

Yin Zhen or Silver Needle. This is the most highly prized of white teas. It comes from China, and takes its name from the leaves used to make it, which are harvested when they’re young and still unfurled, and look like needles.

Zillah. The world’s oldest gas pump is still going strong, and can be found in Zillah, in Washington State. It’s known as the Teapot Dome Service Station, as it happens to look like a teapot

Source: https://www.finedininglovers.com/stories/tea-facts/