White, green, black or oolong - tea trivia is steeping.

Tea steepers everywhere - the guessing game is over. Our tea trivia and history lesson covers white tea, green tea, black tea and oolong tea. Consider yourself informed.

White tea comes from the Camellia sinensis plant. The leaves are picked and harvested before the leaves open fully, when the buds are still covered by fine white hair. That's why it's called white tea. It is scarcer than the other traditional teas, and quite a bit more expensive. It is similar to green tea, in that it's undergone very little processing and no fermentation. There is, however, a noticable difference in taste. Most green teas have a distinctive 'grassy' taste to them, but white tea does not. The flavour is described as light, and sweet. It has the lowest amount of caffeine and it has most likely the highest antioxidant properties.

Green tea also comes from the Camellia sinensis plant. It is dried, but not fermented. The shorter processing gives green tea a lighter flavour than black tea. It also helps keep all the beneficial chemicals intact, which is why green tea is so good for you. It it also lower in caffeine and has higher antioxidant properties.

Black tea is the most consumed of the four types of teas. It is the highest in caffeine, but still has antioxidant properties, just not quite as much as others. Black tea is oxidized and fermented during processing, to give it its distinctive flavour. Black tea has a full, rich taste.

Oolong tea is the most difficult of the four types of teas to process. The best way to describe oolong tea is that it is somewhere in between green and black tea. This is because it is only partially oxidized during the processing.

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