Tea and tisanes

What tea is, and what it is not

Updated October 2026

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One plant, many products Oxidation is the main variable Pu-erh genuinely is fermented The federal board of tea experts is gone Which leaves the general rules Tea keeps far better than coffee References

Tea comes from one species. Everything else is a tisane, and using the word loosely is the most common labeling slip in this half of the property.

One plant, many products

Green, white, oolong, black and pu-erh are all made from the same plant. What distinguishes them is processing: how the leaf is handled after picking, how much it is allowed to oxidize, and how it is dried or aged. That is a different mental model from coffee, where the variety and origin do more of the work.

Oxidation is the main variable

Green tea is processed to stop oxidation quickly; black tea is allowed to oxidize fully; oolong sits between. The word fermentation is used loosely in the trade for this, and for most teas it is not a fermentation at all, which is worth knowing before writing copy that repeats the trade usage.

Pu-erh genuinely is fermented

It involves microbial activity and deliberate aging, which makes it the exception to the paragraph above and a genuinely different product with different storage requirements. It is also the one tea where age is usually a selling point rather than a problem.

The federal board of tea experts is gone

For ninety-nine years imported tea was inspected against federal standards by a Board of Tea Experts. The Tea Importation Act of 1897 was repealed by the Federal Tea Tasters Repeal Act of 1996, and imported tea is now handled under the general food law like everything else.

Which leaves the general rules

Statement of identity, net quantity, ingredients, allergens where relevant, and the responsible party. There is no composition to meet and no grade to claim, so the honesty of the description is doing all the work.

Tea keeps far better than coffee

It is dry, it is not off-gassing, and its enemies are moisture, air and absorbed smells rather than a short freshness window. That makes the packaging problem simpler and the business much less dependent on speed of distribution.

References

Federal Tea Tasters Repeal Act of 1996, Public Law 104-128, April 9, 1996, which eliminated the Board of Tea Experts by repealing the Tea Importation Act of 1897. Imported tea remains subject to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. congress.gov

21 CFR 101, Food Labeling, which carries the general requirements that apply here in the absence of a standard of identity: the statement of identity, net quantity, ingredient list and the name and place of business of the responsible party. law.cornell.edu

Written from federal regulation and from the published physics and chemistry of staling, not from a laboratory. There is no standard of identity for coffee or tea, so most of what governs a product here is the general requirement that labels be truthful and claims be substantiated. Anything here is a starting point for a conversation with your state department of agriculture, not a determination that you comply.