Tea Grading Guide

Tea grading is the system that is used to help buyers know what kind of quality the tea that they are getting is. The difficulty with grading is that it’s different all over the world. The most straightforward system is used in India, Sri Lanka or any estates that grow the more common western teas.

Starting with the western tea grading system, a general rule of thumb is “more letters, better quality”. The 3 main types of tea are whole leaf (highest quality), fannings (medium quality), and dust (lowest quality). The fannings are the smaller bits of tea that are left over when the tea is sifted through. Dust is tea, usually black tea, that is ground up to create a powder.

Each of these have their own grading and some estates even focus mainly on one particular category.

Whole leaf grading starts at OP or Orange Pekoe. It also has nothing to do with the orange fruit. It’s actually after a Dutch royal family named Orange. While pekoe is a Chinese word that is used to refer to quality tea. After OP, you just add in a description word. So next is FOP or Flowery Orange Pekoe which is already getting into what is considered “high-quality”. You can also add a 1 behind it, FOP1, for the limited even higher quality leaves out of the batch. Then it’s Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe or GFOP and so on. I’ll list all of the grades for whole leaf below:

OP: Orange Pekoe, based level

OP1: Best of OP batch

FOP: Flowery Orange Pekoe, long leaf and few tips

FOP1: Best of FOP batch

GFOP: Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe, more prominent tips than FOP

TGFOP: Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe, highest proportion of tips

TGFOP1: Best of TGFOP batch

FTGFOP: Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe, the highest quality grade

FTGFOP1 or STGFOP or SFTGFOP: best of FTGFOP batch, only the absolute finest of whole tea leaves

 

As you can tell, it really goes from OP then adds more letters as it goes up to higher grades. This goes for fannings as well. Fannings start at OF or Orange Fannings. Then go by the same as the whole leaves after that. FOF which adds flowery, then GFOF adding golden, TGFOF adding tippy. When you add letters, it basically means that it’s better quality.

OF: Orange Fannings

FOF: Flowery Orange Fannings

GFOF: Golden Flowery Orange Fannings

TGFOF: Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Fannings

 

Dust is really just PD or pekoe dust, and then PD1 or the best batch of PD. There is D1 as well which is just dust 1. That’s basically the same grade as PD1.

This is the main grading system that is used throughout tea growers that basically are anyone but China, Japan and Taiwan. They have their own grading systems.

 

Japan’s grading system is not very clear. It ranges from “good” to “pinnacle” all of which can also be organic. The grades are all based on aspects like shading, hand picking vs machine picking, tea breeds, fertilizing, and the taste. Pinnacle is the hand picked, great shading, extraordinary fertilizing management, with the breeds that are recommended by Kyoto and have a mellow and sweet taste. With the “good” being the opposite of all of that.

Good: Machine trimmed, not ideal shading, not ideal breeds with less mellow and sweet taste

Superior: Slightly better than Good

Premium: Slightly better than Superior

Super Premium: Slightly better than Premium

Pinnacle: Hand picked, great shading, extraordinary fertilizing management, with the breeds that are recommended by Kyoto and have a mellow and sweet taste

 

The grading system in China is a bit unclear. They are numbered with 1 being the highest grade and the lower quality as the numbers go higher with no real end point. Most people will have the 7-9 graded teas.

Other than this, there are names for the teas like “pre-qingming” which means “before the rains” if there are any names like this before the actual name of the tea then it’s usually higher graded and better quality. The highest quality teas in China are rare now-a-days with machines taking over most of the processing. The best quality teas from China are the ones where the entire process is done by hand. There are many farmers that have a huge passion for their craft and still continue the traditional handmade tea process.

Enaga Tea is thrilled that we get the opportunity to work with those farmers that love their craft and provide some of the best quality tea in China. It’s not the easiest to find, but we wouldn’t want to work with anyone else.

If you’re interested in checking out some of our specialty teas, you can check out the shop at enagatea.com.

I hope this guide is helpful, and as always, if you have any questions or want to discuss further, feel free to contact me at alex@enagatea.com.