Jasmine Tea

I’ll eventually add to this (I think), I didn’t proof read it yet and decided to pump this out before I hit the bed (4:30am wooo….)

There are a couple ways that tea leaves could be scented with Jasmine:

1) Scenting with jasmine essential oil: loading up a misting gun and spraying tea leaves with jasmine essential oil. This method is a bit crude, the jasmine aroma is potentially strong but the flavor isn’t all that pleasant. Essential oils are generally bitter and a jasmine tea created this way wouldn’t be using a very high quality base ingredient so you’re likely compounding bitter on bitter. I haven’t seen any tea shops which stock jasmine tea at that quality level in Calgary. If you go to a supermarket and look for jasmine tea, that’s likely the kind of tea that you’ll find in the boxes of teabags.

2) Scenting with fresh jasmine flowers: there’s a lot to unpack with this. First of all, jasmine flowers are incredibly fragrant while they are fresh, probably a contender for the most fragrant flower in the world. Once they have been dried there is virtually no aroma to them, and in fact they are slightly bitter (as you might expect from a flower). The dried flowers contribute nothing meaningful to fragrance or flavor. Blends of tea which include the dry jasmine flowers are more of a gimmick to people who don’t know this. I want to clarify that teas which include the flowers aren’t inherently low quality. There is something to be said about the appearance of tea, and a market which will support teas which look ‘pretty’.

In China, the season in which a high quality green or white tea is made is early spring, these teas will be at their best for harvesting before the Qing Ming festival usually sometime around April 5th. The best province to obtain jasmine from these days is Guangxi. Jasmine’s growing season in Guangxi is from May to November with the peak of quality around July-August.

Due to the fact that both ingredients growing season is different the tea must be stored in a good condition while the jasmine is being collected. Once both raw materials are obtained the proper scenting process can begin. When a producer feels they have a great crop of tea, they will decide how many rounds of scenting the tea will undergo with fresh jasmine blossoms. Each round of scenting will use literally thousands of jasmine flowers. This is a very expensive process, the amount of scenting will be a huge factor in the teas final price. Apparently 9 times is the feasible maximum (there are diminishing returns) while anything after 3 should be of very good quality. The 2019 crop I have for sale here has been scented 5 times.

The process could be summarized like this: 

1. Spread tea on a table
2. Cover tea with unopened jasmine blossoms
3. Wait a day or two while the blossoms open and release their fragrance
4. Remove opened blossoms and replace them with unopened ones
5. Repeat the process until satisfied with the result

Another very important thing is the shape and type of the tea. White and green tea are the standards. White tea doesn’t undergo a rolling process, the cell structure of the leaf is pretty much the same as when it’s picked. The problem is that leaves are hydrophobic and don’t easily let in fragrances. The amount of times you need to scent a white tea for the aroma to stick is more than green tea. Green teas get rolled, the cell walls break down and the insides of the leaf become exposed to the surrounding oxygen, this fact alone makes the scenting of green teas much easier. White teas, especially silver needles, don’t have a lot of flavor on their own. If you’re in it for the sole fragrance and perceived flavor of jasmine it might be in your best interest to go with a white tea with a high scenting count such as a 8x scented silver needle. Those are pretty expensive though.

In General green teas have a much stronger flavor than silver needles do and they tend to suck in the fragrance of jasmine much easier, the combination creates an incredibly lush aroma in the infusion. The shape of the tea matters a lot too. Consider that jasmine pearls are rolled into the little ball shape before the scenting process. When the jasmine blossoms are spread on top of the dried tea the fragrance will only hit the outside surface of the tea. Sure, some of the fragrance might make its way inside but the scenting process is much more efficient with a loose green tea than a fancy shape like a jasmine pearl. The result you get from scenting the jasmine pearls is a tea which smells a lot like jasmine but focuses more on the flavor of the tea. 

Lastly I want to say that to me, jasmine teas take 2 forms: masculine and feminine. The masculine versions of jasmine tea are generally the white teas and revolve around aromas like pineapple and new fabric car seats. The feminine jasmines are usually the green teas which are more lush, ‘pink’, juicy, and perfumed. Assuming the gender of my jasmine tea… What have I become?

Jasmine tea is the most common style of scented tea in the world. Most of us who have tried jasmine pearls usually stick with it under the assumption that all jasmine pearls are the same and that nothing could be better than the one we found at our local neighborhood shop. I’d urge you to check out another source (the one I sell here outstanding in my humble opinion). I would also encourage you to try out a jasmine white tea like silver needles and compare it to what you know. I’d be curious to see if you like it better. I sell both types of tea throughout the year. I almost always have jasmine pearls on hand because of the large amount I go through. I will only bring in the silver needles teas around their release time though. Due to their high cost I don’t want to risk bringing in stock which wont sell before the new crop arrives.

Ciao!