I present the potato. It’s baked, fried, ground, roasted, mashed, puréed, steamed, and boiled (to name a few). In other words, we interact with our food in as many creative ways as we can manifest. Over the span of centuries, we’ve done the same with tea leaves and continue to process them by using age-old artisanal methods to produce various wildly complex and aromatic teas. This begs the question – how exactly does the tea plant of the forest become the beverage in our hands and why does whatever we’re doing work? Today, we’re scratching the surface, traveling the tea leaf’s journey, and breaking down the science of tea-processing. Let’s dive right in.