Charlie Baden: Hi! I am Charlie, Senior Blend Master at Celestial Seasonings. We have been talking about tea and how it is such a good healthy beverage for drinking. Now let's look and see what tea is and what's in that tea bag. So basically the two different varieties of tea that are in market out there, your traditional teas like your Black Tea or English Breakfast, Green tea, all come from the same plant, Camellia Sinensis. So we will talk a little bit about White Tea which is actually the plucking on a specific time of year of a new shoot from the tea bush and used as white tea only. It goes into our drying pan and just air dries and is the least processed from the Camellia Sinensis plant.

Next is the Green Tea. What we have here is Green Tea, another variety from the Camellia Sinensis plant. Green Tea has become very, very popular and especially for tea category in the past few years because of its health benefits and high anti-oxidant value, tastes good. This is a Sencha variety; leaves are plucked and within a few hours after plucking we go through a steam heat process that starts the oxidation and keeps the leaves very fresh and tasty; great tea to be drinking.

Going from the Camellia Sinensis we will move into the Herbal Tea varieties. One we have here is Peppermint leaves and Peppermint is great as a single component and works well to help in the stomach ailments or any kind of digestion issues. Also has a high menthol content so it has a relief to your sinuses maybe if you have a cold. Next one, we have are Camomile Flowers. The Camomile Flowers are good for helping you relax in the evening especially a sedative type quality that soothes and helps you get to sleep. Moving on to more of the fruity based ingredients we have Hibiscus here. Celestial makes many zinger varieties of tea and Hibiscus is the main component which adds a nice fruity, sour flavor component to it. It has been known through studies to lower blood pressure. So we will move on to Liquorice Root, it is in Our Sleepytime Throat Tamer. And Liquorice Root is great for calming sore throats and gives a nice, sweet throat coat to give some relief to minor sore throat that you might have .

Now that we have talked about what's in the tea, let's talk about the proper way to brew the tea.