Though Chinese tea has a history that spans thousands of years, tea farmers and crafters continually come up with techniques for making new and interesting teas. In the early 20th century, one farmer in Taiwan experimented with using leaves that showed damage from bug bites, and created the first Eastern Beauty tea. The commercial success of this risky experiment proved there was something special about this novel processing choice, but it was only recently that modern science has shed some light on the reasons behind the unique flavor.

Today, bug bitten leaves are used to make many different kinds of tea, in what seems like a wider variety every year. While some famous styles use bug bitten leaves by definition, others use the phrase mi xiang to denote a bug bitten version. This title translates directly to “honey fragrance”, and describes the naturally sweet characteristics of many bug bitten teas. As strange as it may sound, the attacking insects play a big part in the flavor of the final tea.

Across the world, flavored teas are some of the most popular. Famous styles like Jasmine Green, Masala Chai, and Earl Grey are all made with a base of Camellia sinensis tea leaves and added flavor. Despite the occasional snobbery of purists, flavored styles come in a wide range of quality, from mass produced tea bags at the grocery store to whole leaves flavored with organic ingredients. To check the quality of flavored teas, it is important to ask how the extra flavors were added.

Shopping for pu-erh can be confusing. With the added variables of age and fermentation, pu-erh is one of the most diverse categories of tea, and the growing popularity of the style only makes it easier to find bad examples. Since shopping for pu-erh can feel like a guessing game, it’s tempting to look for signs of quality in simple visual distinctions, like whether the tea is pressed into a cake or left in loose form. So what can we really tell about the tea from the way it is packaged?

White teas have only gotten more and more popular with each year we’ve been in the tea business. Amid western marketing that promotes a wide range of health benefits and the modern affluence of Chinese connoisseurs, the demand for traditional white tea has skyrocketed, and continues to increase with each new harvest. As with most “famous” teas, this demand long ago outpaced the supply from the traditional farms that earned the famed reputation in the first place. Today, many white teas are grown outside the traditional region of Fuding County, Fujian, but purists consider these to be imitations, even if they're made with traditional crafting methods.

For drinkers of Chinese tea, the label “Monkey Picked” is a familiar one, typically applied to oolong teas made from the Tieguanyin variety in Anxi County, Fujian. Today, with the moniker applied to a vast range of teas within this style, it seems fairly obvious that it has taken on a poetic meaning, meant to imply information about the style and quality of the tea rather than offer factual information about the harvesting process. Certainly, tea farms in Anxi County don’t really depend on teams of monkeys to pluck their valuable leaves...do they?

Thanks in part to highly lauded health benefits, the popularity of green tea has exploded worldwide. Backed by promises of weight loss, anti-aging capabilities, and the novelty of a natural bright green color, green tea has become a trending ingredient in everything from cookies and cakes to lattes and protein shakes. But few of these concoctions gives center stage to the green tea itself, instead blending (often powdered) leaves with fillers, sweeteners, or other strong flavors to mask the inherent bitterness of mass-produced teas.

Troubleshoot bitter tea flavors with these brewing tips >>

Unfortunately, the small quantities used for subtle green tea flavor are rarely enough to offer the promised benefits, and the quantity of butter and sugar in a green tea cookie will more than offset the metabolism-boosting effects of the powdered tea that makes it green. To get the most from any green tea, it must be a regular habit, drunk without added flavors or sweeteners. Luckily, this doesn't mean you have to choke down a bitter brew. Find green teas that taste good naturally by asking about these flavor factors:

Summer is coming! Cold brew these five amazing teas for a natural and refreshing iced tea that doesn’t need sugar to taste good.

New to cold brewing? Get started with these simple step-by-step instructions >>

The worldwide popularity of black tea has made it one of the most diverse tea types, with huge range in both flavor and quality. While terroir and regional crafting styles create unique flavor profiles, each farm typically produces several different grades of their own specialty style. This can be confusing, since the terms used for each grade can vary between regions and tea types.

In India, Sri Lanka, and other tea industries founded by the British Empire, there is a complex system of abbreviations to describe the quality of any given tea. But these esoteric letter codes are often used inconsistently, and are not recognized by most Chinese tea producers. Instead of using these coded labels, it is easier to judge the quality of any given tea by looking at the leaves directly.