TEA VARIETALS
All true teas come from the Camellia sinensis plant. Within this category, there are hundreds of different kinds of teas, each with their own individual appearance, taste and aroma. To make sense of all the varieties possible, true teas can be categorized into 4 major groups: White, Green, Oolong and Black. These categories refer to how much a tea is fermented, or oxidized. Similar to the way leaves turn brown in autumn, oxygen changes the properties of the tealeaves. By selectively exposing the tea leaves to air, tea-farmers and artisans can bring out certain flavors and aromas. In other words, this oxidation process will determine whether the tea will end up as White, Green, Oolong or Black.

Generally speaking, the less a tea is oxidized, the lighter it will be in both taste and aroma. Heavily oxidized teas will yield a dark, rich, reddish-brown infusion while less oxidized teas will yield a light, yellow-green liquor.

BLENDED & SCENTED TEA
Any of the tea-categories discussed can be enhanced with herbs, spices, flowers, fruits, essential oils and flavors to create whimsical, imaginative blends. When done well, the addition of interesting, flavorful ingredients can bring out special characteristics unique to each tea.

For example, Octavia Tea's Organic Jasmine Pearl is made by hand-rolled tealeaves scented with fresh jasmine. It takes nearly 2,000 hand-plucked leaves to fill a single tin. After plucking, the leaves are layered with 7 times their weight in jasmine flowers which bloom in the cool night air and leave behind their intoxicating fragrance. The jasmine flowers are removed but the scent remains, absorbed in the leaves themselves. Jasmine Pearl is one of the world's finest delicacies and most prized teas.

Whenever considering blended, scented and aromatized teas, be sure that the essential oils and flavors essences used are natural. Many companies use cheap, artificial flavors to save money. Unfortunately, there is no law requiring low-grade tea companies to reveal the use of artificial or chemical flavorings in tea, so consumers may not know what they are drinking. Octavia Tea specializes in whimsical, imaginative blends and procures only the best natural and organic ingredients. We list ALL ingredients on our label so drink with confidence, knowing you are getting the best natural and organic ingredients available!

FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE FLAVOR
Like fine wine, tea's flavor is influenced by climate, soil, altitude, at what time of day and how it is picked, processing, blending, packaging, transportation, and storage. Tea Experts can determine the type of tea, country of origin and, often, the time of year a tea was produced just by its appearance and taste.

QUALITY
While some tea plantations use machines to assist in manufacturing, the best and most expensive tea is still harvested as it was thousands of years ago�by hand. Tea pickers, carrying straw baskets on their backs, collect each leaf individually from rows of tea plants. Most tea is harvested by coarse plucking, in which the bud and top four leaves of a branch are picked. Higher quality teas require fine plucking and use only the bud and top two leaves which are still young, fresh, and nutrient dense. The leaves used during processing greatly influence both quality and taste.

ESTATE TEAS
As an agricultural product, tea can vary slightly from year to year due to changes in climate, rainfall and other seasonal conditions. In order to mask changes in flavor for the lowest cost, large-scale tea companies typically combine teas from hundreds of gardens and regions. The downside is that blending tea on this scale destroys the unique characteristics of each different tea, turning it into a single, monotonous, bland beverage. Imagine taking every kind of wine imaginable and mixing it together until you're left with only one kind!

As a backlash to this practice, the new, vogue concept from continental Europe is Estate Teas, meaning that each tea that comes from a single garden or estate from a particular year. The traditional teas in the Octavia Tea line are considered Estate Teas because each is unique to a single garden that is famed for that specific type of tea.

PLANT VARIETIES
Botanists recognize more than 2,000 varietals, or subspecies, of the tea plant-accounting for thousands of different types of tea, each with their own unique characteristics and flavor profiles. For example, teas made from the Indian tea plant are generally stronger and take well to milk and sugar, while teas from the Chinese tea plant are typically more subtle with floral undertones.