How Tea Is Made

Green and black tea come from the same plant. What separates them is minutes, degrees and humidity - decided by someone in a shed. This is the book about that decision.

All six categories - green, white, yellow, oolong, black and dark - are Camellia sinensis. Not different species. Not terroir. A sequence of choices, each one measurable: how long the leaf loses water, how hard the cell is broken, how many minutes oxidation runs before heat stops it.

HOW TEA IS MADE follows one leaf down that decision tree, from the field to the auction floor: plucking, withering, rolling, oxidation, fixing, drying, sorting, grading, blending, price. Fourteen chapters in four parts, built on the axis of oxidation rather than on geography.

Inside: twenty-two process diagrams drawn for this edition, more than seventy photographs, a full-colour interior, a glossary, an index, and a sourced note for every figure quoted - with the year. A closing section takes apart twelve things everyone repeats about tea, one source at a time.

Not a tasting manual, not a directory of famous teas, not a recipe book: one leaf, one process, followed to the end - with the numbers.