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How climate change might affect tea

Changes in temperature and rainfall patterns can affect the growing season, flavour and health benefits of tea.
  1. Anna Nowogrodzki

    1. Anna Nowogrodzki is a freelance journalist based in Boston, Massachusetts.

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The largest tea plantation in the province of Yunnan, China, is a source of prized pu-erh tea. Credit: MICHAEL S. YAMASHITA/National Geographic

When you take a sip of tea, you’re drinking a beverage that is grounded in a particular time and place. In Yunnan province, southwestern China, which is the source of a highly prized tea known as pu-erh, summer brings monsoon rains, whereas spring is comparatively dry. Tea leaves that are harvested in spring therefore have different qualities to those collected in summer: each tea contains around 50 chemicals that are unique to its season of harvest, says Albert Robbat, a chemist at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.

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Nature 566, S10-S11 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00399-0

This article is part of Nature Outlook: Tea, an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content.

References

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