Tea grades

Wow. I was surprised how little I knew about tea grades when I looked them up. Originally this post was going to be about loose tea versus tea bags, but when doing that research I saw some terminology thrown around with regards to the tea bags and grading that I decided to look into it more closely! And without further ado, I shall jump into the grading system!

• D (Dust): This is the lowest grade. It consists mostly of small pieces of tea and tea leaves. The reason this is low grade is that as the tea leaves are broken up from their original state (whole!) they lose essential oils, which is key to a tasty brew.
• Fanning: This is a low grade. It consists mostly of pieces of tea leaves. Many generic tea bags consist of this grade.
• BOP (Broken Orange Pekoe): Ok, I was surprised to find out that "orange pekoe" was actually a grade and not a type of tea. Mind fuck! That being said, orange pekoe refers to full tea leaves, so broken orange pekoe would be - you guessed it! - broken tea leaves.
• OP (Orange Pekoe): Whole leaves!
• FOP (Flowery Orange Pekoe): Flowery refers to the bud of the tea plant. This grade consists of whole leaves and the buds!
• GFOP (Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe): Golden refers to the hue of the tea leaf tips, with gold being a sign of quality. GFOP consists of quality whole leaves and buds.
• TGFOP (Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe): This is just getting comical now! Tippy refers to a significant amount of tea buds. So, this grade has quality whole leaves and a bunch of tea buds.
• FTGFOP (Fine Tippy Golden Flower Orange Pekoe): This is really a sub category of the above TGFOP. It's just fantastic grade for tea.
• SFTGFOP (Super Fine Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe): That's a mouthful, another subgrade of TGFOP, and the highest grade possible for teas.

As for what affects the grade of tea, there are a whole slew of factors considered by tea experts, including but not limited to the type of tea (green, black, white), the location it was grown, what stage of growth the leaves were picked, and how they were manufactured.

There are two methods of testing: scientific and sensory. As can be deduced from the names, scientific deals mostly with critically assessing chemical and physical attributes to composition of the tea. Sensory testing, which is still most popular, is conducted by tea experts; they evaluate the smell, taste, appearance, and feel of the leaves.

Thanks to Wissotzky Tea for the above deets!