What color is tea?

While black tea goes through all processing stages the production of green tea excludes withering and fermentation. Green tea is also called non-fermented.

As to the degree of fermentation if we imagine a fermentation scale then red and yellow teas will be located between black and green teas. Red and yellow teas are fermented but not to the final degree. Therefore they are also referred to as semi-fermented. Speaking in general the qualities of red tea are closer to black tea and those of yellow tea are closer to green tea.

There are also two types of tea that are increasingly popular today: white tea and pu-erh tea.

For the production of white tea only the youngest half open leaves of the first flush are used that are just dried. Ready white tea has no twisted leaves looking like a handful of dry leaves.

Pu-erh tea is made from particularly large tea leaves that are subjected to strong fermentation and then matured for long time.