Flavored Tea

↑About Flavored Tea

Flavored tea is made by blending leaves of the tea plant Camellia sinensis with some other flavoring, usually herbs, spices, flowers, or fruit.

There are many types of flavored teas, since they can be made out of different varieties of tea and there is no limit to the types of flavoring that can be used. Some of the most well-known flavored teas are Earl Grey (usually black tea + bergamot orange), jasmine tea (usually green tea + jasmine blossoms), and moroccan mint tea (usually green tea + mint leaves).

Fruits are also common blending ingredients. Commonly used fruits include lychee, orange, berries, or various tropical fruits. Herbs and spices commonly combined with tea include mint, ginger, ginseng, cinnamon, cardamon, clove, and fennel.

Flavored teas can be mixed up into a blend which is packaged and sold as-is, or they can be made up at the time of brewing.

Scented teas

When the tea is flavored only with flowers, especially when the flavoring is carried out through a process of layering the leaves with flowers and then removing the flowers, the resulting tea is sometimes called scented tea. Jasmine tea is produced by this method, and slightly less commonly, osmanthus. Flowers with a very strong aroma, such as rose, often just have their petals mixed in with the leaf, and this yields a strong enough aroma.

Extracts and artificial flavorings vs whole ingredients

Many flavored teas are produced by adding extracts or essential oils, or less commonly, artificial flavorings, to a base tea. This method is inexpensive and often yields a more consistent flavor, and sometimes can yield more potent flavors than blending with whole ingredients. However, it can yield blends that are flat or unnatural tasting, lacking the complexity attained by blending tea with whole ingredients.

When this method is used, essential oils and natural extracts are preferable, and tend to produce better results, than artificial flavorings. In the U.S. the legal definition of "natural flavors" is broad, including any flavoring obtained from a natural source, including both essential oils and more processed substances such as distillates or flavorings extracted by enzymolysis or heating. When reading ingredient lists, seeing the term "natural flavors" thus provides little information about what you can expect from the quality of the blend.

Many companies use both extracts with whole ingredients in their flavored teas. In some cases the whole ingredients do impart significant flavor and aroma, but in other cases they are mainly for show, being present in too small a quantity to influence how the tea tastes and smells.

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