Tea Grading

Grading tea is complicated, done differently in each tea-producing country. Mainly tea leaves fall into four categories: Whole Leaf, Broken Leaf, Fannings, and Dust. There is a fifth type, Brick, which is not so much as a grade, but a ancient packaging system!

Black tea is subject to the most exhaustive grading classification system. The black tea most in demand is orange pekoe (pronounced peck-oh), which refers to the silvery down on new leaves and buds. One explanation for the "orange" half of the name is that the Chinese used to flavor these leaves with orange blossoms.

Another suggests that it's a reference to the Netherlands House of Orange, a powerful entity in the early days of tea-trading. Either way, today orange pekoe describes the leaves: the best, most-tender leaves from the tips of the tea plant's young shoots.