Tea I've bought and brewed at home

茶 · Chá

One plant, grown from China to Japan to Kenya and worked a different way in each place. This shelf is mostly Chinese, because that is most of what I drink.

綠茶 · Lǜ Chá

Unoxidized. The leaf is heated soon after picking so it stays green and tastes of the plant itself. China pan-fires it in a wok, which gives chestnut and toasted grain; Japan steams it, which gives seaweed and spring vegetables.

白茶 · Bái Chá

The least worked of the six: withered, dried, and nothing else. The name comes from the silvery down on the buds. It drinks soft and honeyed, and it ages into something deeper.

黃茶 · Huáng Chá

A green tea with one more step. The warm leaf is wrapped in cloth or paper and left to yellow slowly, which rounds off the grassy edge. The rarest of the six, and few makers still bother with it.

烏龍茶 · Wūlóng Chá

Part-oxidized, anywhere between green and red, which makes it the widest family of the six. It runs from the floral Chao Zhou dancongs to the dark roasted rock teas grown on the Wuyi cliffs.

紅茶 · Hóng Chá

Fully oxidized. What the West calls black tea, named here for the colour of the liquor rather than the leaf. Malty, sweet, and hard to ruin. China makes Keemun and lapsang; most of what the world drinks is Assam, Darjeeling or Ceylon.

黑茶 · Hēi Chá

Fermented after processing, then pressed into bricks and cakes that can age for decades. Pu-erh is the one people know. It drinks earthy and smooth, and the old stock is the expensive stock.

花茶 · Huā Chá

A finished tea, layered overnight with fresh flowers until it takes their scent, then sifted clean of them the next morning. Jasmine over green is the one everyone has had; rose and osmanthus do the same work.

武夷岩茶 · Wǔyí Yánchá

Oolong grown in the rocky crevices of the Wuyi cliffs and roasted over charcoal. What the mountain puts in the leaf is called 岩韻, rock rhyme: a mineral edge you taste before anything else. Da Hong Pao, Rou Gui and Shui Xian are the cultivars you meet most.

鳳凰單叢 · Fènghuáng Dāncōng

Oolong from single old bushes on Phoenix Mountain, each one picked and made on its own rather than blended. Every bush is named for the fruit or flower its aroma suggests, which is how a tea ends up called Duck Shit Aroma.

西湖龍井 · Xī Hú Lóng Jǐng

Pressed flat against the wok as it is pan-fired, which is where the sword-shaped leaf and the toasted chestnut both come from. Grown on the hills around West Lake, and the most famous green tea China makes.

普洱 · Pǔ'ěr

Dark tea from Yunnan, pressed into cakes and bricks. Raw pu-erh (生) is left to age for years or decades. Ripe (熟) was invented in 1973 to get to the same place in months, by piling the wet leaf and letting it ferment fast.

九曲紅梅 · Jiǔqū Hóngméi

A rare Hangzhou red tea from the same hills as Longjing, and often called its red counterpart. The name ties the curl of the leaf to Wuyi's Nine Bend Stream and the colour of the liquor to red plum. Plum, honey and dried fruit, with a soft sweet finish.

金駿眉 · Jīn Jùn Méi

Made from the wild bud tips of Tongmu, the same Wuyi reserve lapsang souchong comes from, but left unsmoked. Invented in 2005 for people who wanted a premium black tea without the pine smoke. Honey and dried longan, and almost no astringency.

玉露 · Yùlù

Jade dew is a name that normally belongs to steamed green tea: Enshi Yulu in Hubei, gyokuro in Japan. This is a red tea carrying the name rather than a style with a region behind it.

日月潭紅茶 · Rìyuètán Hóngchá

Red tea from the hills around Sun Moon Lake in Nantou, planted with Assam stock the Japanese brought over in the 1920s and later crossed with wild Taiwanese bushes. Thick and syrupy, with mint and cinnamon where a Chinese red tea would be malty.

玄米茶 · Genmaicha

Green tea cut with roasted brown rice, some of which pops in the roasting like popcorn. It began as a way to make a small amount of tea go further, and stayed because the toasted rice suits the steamed green underneath it.

焙じ茶 · Hōjicha

Green tea roasted in a pan until it turns brown, which burns off most of the grassiness and nearly all of the caffeine. Kuki hojicha uses the stems rather than the leaves. It drinks toasty and sweet, and it is what Kyoto pours in the evening.

白牡丹 · Bái Mǔ Dān

White tea picked as a bud with the first leaf or two still attached, rather than the bud alone that makes Silver Needle. That extra leaf is what gives it body: hay, melon, a little honey, and more to it than the grade above.

芽苞 · Yá Bāo

Wild buds picked from old trees before they open, then dried and left alone. They look more like seeds than leaves, and drink cool and resinous, closer to a syrup than to a cup of tea.