How is tea graded?
The first thing to keep in mind is that these are descriptions of the dry, cured leaf only. They have no necessary relation to the aroma, color, or flavor of the end product. It is possible to get a delicious cup from ugly, broken leaves; it is possible to get an awful cup from well-handled, beautiful whole leaves. But since you may have little information to work with other than the grade, let’s look at the various grades.
The first thing to keep in mind is that these are descriptions of the dry, cured leaf only. They have no necessary relation to the aroma, color, or flavor of the end product. It is possible to get a delicious cup from ugly, broken leaves; it is possible to get an awful cup from well-handled, beautiful whole leaves. But since you may have little information to work with other than the grade, let’s look at the various grades. There are different grading schemes for black and green teas. Here are the basic grades of black tea: Flowery Orange Pekoe (peck-oh), Orange Pekoe Pekoe Souchong Broken Orange Pekoe Broken Orange Pekoe Fannings Broken Pekoe Fannings Dust ‘Pekoe’ (pronounced ‘PECK-oh’) is derived from a Chinese word meaning ‘white’; this referred to the white hair on the leaf bud. Early Western merchants used the word to mean that the leaves so graded were exclusively plucked from the tip of the branch: the leaf bud and the two leaves below the bud. Its use in India and Sri Lanka bro
