eli5: what makes tea, tea? like what’s different than me plucking leaves off a random tree or finding dry ones off the ground and essentially making flavoured water?
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In addition to being from a specific plant, actual-tea is processed differently to make different kinds of product.
If you just take the whole leaves and try them, you get white tea which has a very delicate (some might say almost nonexistent) flavour.
Most of the interesting-flavoured compounds in tea are produced by oxidising and/or fermenting the leaves before drying them.
If you just oxidise them a little bit (by mildly bruising them and allowing them to sit a while before drying), you get green tea – the leaves are still green, but you get a greeny-yellow liquid from steeping them in water, with a mild flavour.
If you chop them up and leave them to sit longer before drying, the air and the enzymes really get to work transforming the chemical composition of the leaf juices, and you get black tea – producing a red-brown liquid with a lot more astringent tannins and a deeper flavour.
ETA: also the type (eg young leaves from the tips vs older leaves) and the exact variety, growing conditions, etc all go into the differences between different teas.
Plus some are heat treated, some are cultured with fungus, etc. etc. it’s as intricate as winemaking and cheesemaking, seriously.
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