茶 - How to identify varieties of tea?

Question

I'm looking for vocabulary to help puzzle-out the kind of tea contained in various packages from the Chinese characters on their labels.

So far I recognize 茶(tea) and 叶(leaves). (Apparently these are simplified-Chinese forms.)

On the label i have in front of me, I can't even tell where the variety is named (as opposed to brand name, promotional adjectives, etc.) The biggest character, I assume, is just a stylized caligraphic 茶(tea):

The other main parts are near the top, in the middle below the big 茶(tea), and at the bottom:

I am not sure where to look even, and I don't have a way to find or enter characters for searching, so any help with tea-variety vocabulary or other hints would be appreciated.

Answer 1

铁观音　Tie Guanyin Tea / tat-kuan-yin Tea / Iron Buddha Tea
乌龙茶　Oolong Tea 
黑茶　Dark Tea
红茶　Black Tea
龙井茶　Longjing Tea / Lungching Tea / Dragon Well Tea
君山银针　Junshan Silver Needle Tea
碧螺春　Biluochun Tea
牡丹绣球　Peony Jasmine Tea
黄山毛峰　Huangshan Maofeng Tea
岩茶　Rock Tea
冻顶乌龙　Dongding Oolong Tea
菊花茶　Chrysanthemum Tea
台湾阿里山乌龙　Taiwan Alishan Oolong Tea
大红袍　Dahongpao Tea (Wuyi Mountain Rock Tea)
普洱　Pu'er Tea
祁门红茶　Keemun Black Tea
茉莉花茶　Jasmine Tea
陈年普洱　Aged Pu'er Tea
立顿红茶　Lipton Black Tea
台湾冻顶乌龙　Taiwan Dongding Oolong Tea
绿茶　Green Tea
太平猴魁　Taiping Houkui Tea 　(A kind of Green Tea)
西湖龙井　Xihu Longjing Tea 　(A kind of Green Tea)
大白毫　White Milli-Silver Needle Tea
信阳毛尖　Xinyang Maojian Tea　 (A kind of Green Tea)

Source : http://www.dxmtea.com/captions.asp?id=585, and multiple others

So your package showed 铁观音 (Tie Guanyin Tea) 神品(Shen Pin, This is a brand maybe) 藏香 (Stock Flavored) 真空无氧包装(Vacuumed and oxygen-free packaging) 茶叶新鲜原味(Fresh and Original Flavor Tea).

铁观音 is a kind of Oolong Tea here, this package assumes you already knew it's a name of tea.

Answer 2

If you need to look up Chinese tea terms (including 藏香), please have a look at this Chinese tea lexicon, which has well over 3000 terms defined and cross-referenced. Disclosure: I created the site about ten years ago and have been maintaining it ever since.

Answer 3

tomriddle_1234 already give you a big list.

However, if you want to make the learning experience a bit more interesting, you can use the color list

• 黑　Black
• 白　White
• 紅　Red
• 黃　Yellow
• 綠　Green
• 烏龍Oolong

All of them are wikipedia pages. They all have Chinese and English version.

Answer 4

Tomriddle_1234 provided a great detailed translation. In the future, if u have an iPhone or iPad, you can add a couple Chinese character keyboards to input the words by writing (but brush strokes have a very specific order to input- left to right then top to bottom)

Answer 5

Thanks to @Stumpy Joe for his comment above about translation of tea colours. For completeness, note that 红茶 （lit. 'red tea') is 'black tea' in English, while 黑茶 (lit. 'black tea') is usually translated as 'dark tea'.

See @tomriddle's answer for a very good run-down of the more popular kinds of tea.