As we all know, our country is a big tea country, and tea is the first part of the daily life of the Chinese nation. Whether it is tea production or tea culture, it has the longest history in the world. my country's tea can be divided into six categories according to the classification of tea properties, namely: green tea, white tea, yellow tea, black tea, green tea (oolong tea), black tea, etc. After drinking tea for so long, do you know which tea is What was the first one to appear?

The origin of green tea - around 3000 years

Green tea is one of the main tea types in China. It refers to the new leaves or buds of the tea tree, which have not been fermented and have been cured and processed. Drinks made by shaping, drying and other processes. Green tea is the earliest tea created in my country.

The steamed green tea process was born out of the Tang Dynasty when the "steamed green tea" method began to appear. In the Song Dynasty, steamed green group tea developed into steamed green loose tea. In the Yuan Dynasty, the method of making steamed green loose tea was more sophisticated. During the processing, the buds and leaves were usually made separately according to their age and tenderness. Wang Zhen's "Agricultural Book" of the Yuan Dynasty mentioned for the first time steaming the green loose tea and then kneading it while it was hot. The modern steamed green tea technology is becoming mature.

The origin of yellow tea - around 1400

Yellow tea has been around since ancient times, but different historical periods and different observation methods have given different meanings to the concept of yellow tea. The earliest recorded concept of yellow tea in history is different from the yellow tea referred to today. It is based on the original characteristics of the tea tree variety. The buds and leaves of the tea tree naturally show yellow color. For example, Anhui Shouzhou Yellow Tea, which was famous in the Tang Dynasty, and Sichuan Mengding Huangya, which was a tribute tea, were both named because of the natural yellowing of the buds and leaves.

Historically, before there was a systematic tea classification theory, many consumers mostly identified yellow tea by intuition. This method of identifying yellow tea confuses several tea categories with very different processing methods and tea quality, and involves many types of tea with different qualities.

As mentioned above, yellow tea is named after its fresh leaves have bright yellow buds, but it is actually a green tea. There are also rough and old green teas, sun-dried green tea and aged green tea; green teas such as Lianxin and Baozhong are all yellow and yellow, and it is easy to mistake them for yellow tea.

The origin of dark tea - 1,300 years of history

Dark tea was produced in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, later than yellow tea. However, the "dark tea" in these records before the 16th century refers to the processed green tea, which is different from what we now call "dark tea" (Qingzhuan tea, Pu'er tea, Anhua dark tea, Liubao tea etc.) are different.

The production area of ??Hunan dark tea begins in Anhua. Anhua black tea was created in the late 16th century. During production, it is dried, rolled, piled, and then dried; Yunnan Pu'er ripe tea needs to be dried. , kneading, and sun-drying to make sun-dried tea, which is then piled with appropriate tides and dried in the sun. The processing technology is already quite complex, comparable to that of yellow tea.

The origin of black tea - more than 400 years of history

The origin of black tea is in China. The earliest black tea in the world was invented by tea farmers in the Wuyishan tea area of ????Fujian during the Ming Dynasty in China. It was named "Zheng". Mountain souchong". The Jiang family in Tongmu Village, Wuyishan City is a tea family that produces Lapsang Souchong black tea, with a history of more than 400 years. Webster's Dictionary, "Qimen Black Tea" records the origin of Qimen Black Tea - Qimen County, Anhui Province, China.

Souchong black tea is developed from fried green tea. Sun-drying instead of greening was considered to be a further development on the basis of fried greening. After rolling, I found that the leaf color turned red faster, so I gradually understood the law of color change. After kneading, it is piled for a while to make the redness more obvious and the quality change greater. Then stir-fried and baked, the color, aroma and flavor are completely changed.

The origin of white tea - around 1800

White tea is a slightly fermented tea and a traditional famous tea created by Chinese tea farmers. White tea is a kind of tea that is picked, not cured or rolled, and is only processed by drying in the sun or slow fire.

Historical records show that during the Eastern Han Dynasty, a young man named Yin Zhen went to visit the famous Confucian master Xu Shen with the idea of ??making "tea" grown in his hometown. However, when his disciples made things difficult for him, he sat on the ground under his eaves and chewed "tea" , for a moment, Xu Shen's entire mansion was filled with the rich fragrance of tea.

Xu Shen walked out to trace the origin, and then invited Yin Zhen into the study, brewed the "tea" and looked at it. He saw that it had a beautiful appearance, with a white leaf bottom like a silver needle falling into the pot, and a green soup color. Bright, the taste is fresh, refreshing and mellow upon tasting, with an occasional subtle bitter taste immediately filling your mouth. This further inspired his annotation of "tea" in "Shuowen Jiezi", using "槚,茗,茗" to translate and annotate the color, aroma and taste of the word "tea".

The origin of green tea (oolong tea) - more than 1,000 years of history

Oolong tea is also called green tea, semi-fermented tea and fully fermented tea. There are many varieties and it is one of the major tea categories in China. , a tea category with distinctive Chinese characteristics. Oolong tea evolved from the tribute tea dragon dumplings and phoenix cakes of the Song Dynasty, and was created around 1725 (the Yongzheng period of the Qing Dynasty). The pharmacological effects of oolong tea are prominent in fat decomposition, weight loss and bodybuilding. It is called "beauty tea" and "bodybuilding tea" in Japan.

Oolong tea originated in Fujian and has a history of more than 1,000 years. The formation and development of oolong tea must first trace its origin to Beiyuan tea. Beiyuan tea is the earliest tribute tea in Fujian and the most famous tea after the Song Dynasty. There are more than ten books introducing the production and cooking of Beiyuan tea in history. Beiyuan is the area around Fenghuang Mountain in Jianou, Fujian. Tea was produced in the late Tang Dynasty.