I seek a Red Tea FAQ...

What kind? Black tea is known in China as red tea. There's also the South African stuff called Rooibos which is sometimes referred to as red tea

Though I don't have an FAQ per se maybe I can help with questions you've got such as medicinal benefits, caffeine content, etc.

-ben

Per Upton's, Chinese congous are called "red teas" in the trade, and I think I know that Ben is referring to. The liquor and aroma can be not unlike Lipton's, but the comparison ends there. There's a wonderful mix of subtlety and richness in these teas, often with a slightly tart undercurrent.

One of my favorites is Emperor's Red (I'm sure this has dozens of variant names). A very nice info site at

actually goes so far as to delineate red tea as a distinct type of tea (!).

Most people, however, lump black and red teas in the same category. But for me, they can be quite distinct.

From what I understand, all so-called "black" teas are Hong Cha ("red tea") to the Chinese. There is a category of tea called "black tea" ("hei cha"), but that's stuff like pu-erh, liu an, liu bao, etc. In short, unusual teas that improve with age, and usually are associated with a dark liquor color and high steeping temperatures. When Kam Leung draws a distinction between black and red teas on

you must remember that he is Chinese. (From Hong Kong, actually. I have ordered Yixing teapots from him via his site To him, Keemun and Yunnan are red teas, but so are Darjeeling and Assam, and Black tea is pu-erh. It is an interesting site, as far as getting an actual Chinese perspective on Chinese tea. Hey, the Chinese did invent the stuff. You'd think they'd get to name it. :-)

If that's the kind of red tea the OP was talking about, I'd reccomend the rec.food.drink.tea FAQ. However, I think he was referring to South African Rooibos (a caffineless herbal infusion, not "tea" at all). It is sometimes called "red tea", and from the brevity and vagueness of the post from a first-time poster, and the popularity of Rooibos of late, I'd be tempted to say that the OP was asking about Rooibos, and might not have enough experience with tea to know that there would be any confusion, or maybe not even that Rooibos is not true tea (only conjecture). If so, I don't know of any rooibos sites on the Internet, but you could find more searching for "Rooibos" or "Red Bush" than "Red tea", which will get you Chinese black tea.

BTW, there's been a discussion on the Yahoo group Teamail recently about a copyright issue concerning Rooibos. Evidently a US company copyrighted the name "rooibos" before its use was widespread, and are now engaged in a legal battle to hold their sole right to the generic term, insiting others label theirs "red bush".

That might make interesting reading.

ZBL