Tea is known to everyone, but not everyone knows how healthy and tasty a good tea can be. After water, tea is the most consumed beverage in the world. In the Asian world, extractive hot water is even more popular and important than in the Western world.

What most Western people don’t know is that the original tea is basically made from the Camella Sinensis plant. Today the word tea is also used for the extraction of other plants, leaves, herbs, spices and other natural things. So there are thousands of different herbal variants and combinations, but you can find at least 6 major varieties of the original tea: green, white, yellow, black, pu-erh and oolong tea. Some of these may seem strange to you, but oolong tea, for example, is the tea that is mainly served in the general Chinese restaurant.

As already said, Tea has a completely different position in the Western world compared to the Asian world. In the West, most tea comes in little bags that you put in your cup. After waiting for a while, you will throw away the tea bag and the tea will be ready. As this tea can also be good, it is not comparable to a very good Asian-style handmade tea. This tea is not made from tea bags. You have a pot with the herbs and the leaves and the water comes in an outside pot. The first one or two teas made from the same plants are usually thrown away, because the tea gets better with more extraction cycles. Unlike tea from tea bags, you will taste a real aroma. It is therefore not surprising that teahouses, restaurants for the sole purpose of drinking tea, are widespread in the East.

There is a Chinese folk legend about the legendary Emperor of China, Shennong, who is also said to have been the inventor of Chinese agriculture and medicine. When he was drinking a bowl of hot water around the year 2737 B.C. C., some leaves flew into the water from him. After that, the water changed color and Shennong’s curiosity was aroused. When he took a sip of the concoction, he was surprised by the aroma and taste.

Whether there is a true basis for this and other legends or not, it shows that tea has been known in Asia for at least a long time when compared to Europe, etc. Thus, the first record of tea in a more Western script is found in the text of an Arab traveler around the year 879, who reports on the trade in Canton (Guangzhou), the capital of the Chinese province of Guangdong.

Thereafter, there were many travelers who mentioned the tea, but apparently none of them brought samples home. This was the case until the early 17th century, when a Dutch East India Company ship brought some green tea leaves to Amsterdam. Around the same time, Russian Tsar Michael I received tea as a gift from China. Although it took some time, these were the roots of tea that spread throughout the world.

Today there are many types of tea, especially many varieties of tea that do not come from the original tea plant. The native South American variants, since they developed without the influence of Asian tea, are very interesting: for example, Stevia tea, which is made from the very sweet Stevia Rebaudiana plant.

You see, there are so many different types of tea, it’s up to you to try something new…