If you try to buy green tea in a supermarket even in a very large one the chances are that youll only find one kind of green tea: the kind with green tea written on the packet. The green tea that these packets contain tends to be of the absolute lowest quality, and so they are best avoided. Instead, you should try to buy your tea from Chinese markets or food stores, or order it over the Internet, as then you will be able to choose from the full range of green teas.
So which different green teas are there? Well, the most common green tea in Western countries is low-grade Gunpowder thats the stuff youll generally find in the supermarket. It is used because it is cheap, and stays fresher for longer than other green teas, because of the way it is rolled up into little balls.
The most popular green tea in China is Dragon Well, or Lung Ching, a bright green and quite expensive kind of tea. Many consider it to be the best green tea, but because it is expensive and not very much is produced, it is prone to imitation make sure you trust whoever youre buying this tea from to sell you the real thing.
In Japan, green tea drinkers prefer Sencha, a sweeter kind of...