Notes from my tea-tasting

I went tea tasting to my current favorite tea place in Bangalore - Infinitea; with Gaurav Saral.
Gaurav Saral, the guy who owns the place, eats, breathes and lives tea, and he gave us many insights on the whats and the whys alongside tea tasting followed by finger-licking starters and desserts.
And here are some interesting facts, and the only information I still remember from the event.
Yes, yes this is going to be a little dry and a technical post but I had to write it because I'm sure that a few months down the line, I would read this and go 'Oh! I remember nothing of this', just like it happened with my coffee estate walk and wine tasting; except in those cases I don't have anything written so it's almost like it never happened except for the trailing whiff in my memory.

• A typical tea plant, has two leaves with a bud in the center.
• Tea is meant to be slurped-in and rolled in the tongue so the taste hits your pallet, before you swallow it down.
• The different types of tea are: White, Green, Oolong and Black
• Darjeeling has the most ideal weather conditions in the world for growing tea, and so no other tea but that that comes from Darjeeling is allowed to be branded as Darjeeling tea.
• Germany is the tea spot of the west, all imports and distributions to the western world happen from here.
• Assam is the only tea that's drunk with sugar and milk.
• When tea is boiled, it looses it's essence and taste, so the best of the tea's are had with hot water(only).
• All different types of tea are made from the same leaf, the difference comes in the way they are processed after plucking.
• Tea growth happens across all four seasons, and the tea taste differs based on which season the tea was plucked.
• The first plucking of a tea plantation is called the first flush, which has the real tea taste, and most of this is exported.
• White tea is the richest in anti-oxidants, and is of the most expensive kinds. It's made from the bud of the tea plant and hence it stops further growth of the plant which is why a lot of planters do not produce this tea.
• White tea and Green tea skip the fermentation phase of tea processing.
• Oolong tea has a few hours of fermentation and hence it is has the aesthetic beauty of green tea and the taste of black tea.
• Green tea should be brewed for only 2 mins, and the other for only 5 mins, beyond which tea starts to taste bitter.
• Tea contains caffeine but in very little quantities which usually gets released after 5 mins of brewing.
• There are two types of tea, the natural kind which retain the shape of the leaves and CTC (crush, tear, curl) which is of the more commercial powdered kind.

There ends the list of all things that I know about tea-licious tea.