Why Earl black tea and litchi black tea have fragrance do they use essence? Detailed explanation of the production method of seasoned tea

Seasoned tea is the most popular all over the world. The famous jasmine tea, Masala tea and Earl Grey Tea are all made of tea leaves and added flavor. Despite occasional purist snobbishness, flavored tea ranges in quality from mass-produced tea bags at grocery stores to whole-leaf tea bags seasoned with organic ingredients. To check the quality of seasoned tea, it is important to ask how the extra seasoning is added.

Natural

The best seasoned tea is naturally flavored. Like traditional jasmine tea, this method uses fresh and natural ingredients to directly flavor the tea, and then usually removes the source of the flavor. The best jasmine tea (the famous jasmine tea from Fuzhou, Fujian Province) uses leaves harvested in spring, dried and stored until the most fragrant jasmine blossoms at the end of summer. Once the fresh flowers are picked, they are delaminated by the tea, which absorbs the sesame oil from the dried flowers. After making tea every day, all the jasmine flowers are taken out and replaced with fresh flowers, leaving several layers of jasmine aroma, which will last after many times of soaking.

However, the natural flavor is highly limited by the raw materials. For example, mixing fresh fruit with tea will introduce too much water and are more likely to rot the tea rather than give it a lasting taste. The natural fragrance is also not very effective because it requires a lot of aroma ingredients to be transmitted to the tea. For example, naturally flavored Earl Gray black tea is limited by the rarity of bergamot, a citrus fruit that grows almost exclusively in southern Italy. It takes about 100 fruits to make 3 ounces of scented essential oils! The processing of natural scented tea is very hard, which means that they are usually made of high-quality tea to create high-quality end products.

Mix

Mixing is one of the most popular flavoring methods for tea, especially loose leaf tea. Historically, mixed tea has been the easiest way for poor tea drinkers to improve taste and increase the amount of cheap tea. Massala (Masala Chai, perhaps the most famous example) is based on bitter black tea, which is mixed and stewed with various Indian spices and paired with milk to counteract the taste. Another example from Japan is Genmaicha, which uses roasted rice to balance the taste and extend the shelf life of green tea. High-quality tea is not usually used for blended tea because the added taste usually dominates the subtle characteristics of handmade tea.

Nowadays, many mixed teas are actually tea-free, more accurately referred to as herbal tea or "granules". These are usually non-caffeinated and offer interesting or aromatic flavor combinations. They are also more like a mixture of roots, herbs and fungi prescribed by traditional Chinese herbalists, so they usually carry health statements. Of course, if you are looking for herbal remedies, we recommend that you consult a licensed herbalist instead of relying on commercial mixtures. But if you're looking for a delicious, non-caffeinated drink, just be sure to ask your supplier about the source of the ingredients and look for the visible part of the mixture to make sure it's a real deal. Or, if you want to make the ultimate customization, mix your favorite tea with dried flowers or herbs.

Artificial flavoring agent

In the modern world, artificial seasoning is the most common way to add new flavors and excitement to tea. Taste and aroma scientists have perfected the art of refining these sensory experiences into compounds and then using these compounds to create very consistent flavors that will be the same in every tea bag and box on grocery store shelves around the world. Large companies also use professional mixers to produce the same batches of pure tea from different crops on many farms, but seasonings are easier to copy and usually put the taste of the tea in a secondary position, making the quality of the tea irrelevant.

Hand-seasoned tea is seldom valuable. Seasonings are usually used to "camouflage" the taste of low-grade tea and usually cannot withstand multiple soaks because seasonings are only added to the surface of the finished dried tea. In bulk tea, it is easy to identify artificial spices because they usually smell very strong, but the flavor after brewing is quite "light" or "light", with almost no visible ingredients. Spices are occasionally added to enhance or imitate medicinal mixtures such as ginseng tea, which can be misleading in marketing that focuses on health benefits.

On the whole, however, seasoned tea does no harm in itself. Like any other type of tea, there are high-quality and low-quality examples, while low-quality versions are usually more common. Just as we don't use aged Cabernet to make sangria, we don't usually add flavor to our best tea. On the contrary, seasonings are usually added to mask or balance the taste of low-quality tea, while high-quality tea is usually valued for its more subtle inner taste. Paying attention to the methods and ingredients used in the seasoning process is usually a good clue to the basic quality of tea, which can help you distinguish between indulgence, complex handling and plain, mediocre seasoning.