An Introduction to the Six Tea Categories

Where does tea come from

People often ask me what a red-tea tree looks like, or a pu-erh tree, as if each tea comes from a different tree variety. I think it is worth writing a dedicated article about the six tea categories.
Take a cabbage as an example: cabbage comes in many varieties, and common ways to cook it include steaming, salad, plain stir-fry, stir-fry with meat, pickling, and so on.
Fresh tea leaves are like the cabbage, and tea, like cabbage, can be prepared in many ways.
Tea is made from fresh tea leaves through a certain process.
Depending on the process, fresh leaves can be made into six major categories: white, yellow, green, oolong (qing), black (hong), and dark (hei) tea.
Cabbage has many varieties - look them up if you are interested - and tea trees are the same. No tree variety is fixed to one tea. Because of regional separation, certain areas do favor certain varieties: for example, only fresh leaves of Yunnan's large-leaf varieties can be made into pu-erh. But those same leaves can also become other teas - black tea (Dianhong is famous), green tea (Dianlv), or white tea (ancient-tree white tea).

My understanding of the six categories

For complete knowledge of the six tea categories, search for books yourself; here I only share my understanding.

1. The six categories are one classification standard, but not the only one.

The six categories are distinguished by processing. They are a classification created to help us understand tea better.
Today's tea naming also has confusion: for example, Anji white tea is actually a green tea.

2. The six-category standard should change.

Yellow tea currently has a scale of about ten thousand tons, while the national tea output is nearly four million tons - calling yellow tea an independent major category feels a stretch.
Pu-erh is divided into raw and ripe: raw belongs to green tea and ripe belongs to dark tea, which is genuinely hard to understand.
In my opinion, the six-category standard can change, and it should change.

3. My view

a. Look at tea dialectically; do not cling to concepts.

Many processes have evolved. For example, I often use the shaking (yaoqing) process for raw pu-erh; strictly by sun-dried green tea standards that is off-spec, yet I think this process is very necessary.

b. The tea itself is what matters - what category it belongs to is not important.

When pork tastes good, we do not need to know which pig it came from. Tea is the same.
Sticking to old rules does no good for either evaluation or production.
Knowing whether a tea is good matters far more than knowing what tea it is.