By Peter Keen
More and more premium teas contain other agricultural ingredients that are essential to their differentiation: flower buds and petals, spices, herbs, fruit leaves and peel, scents, extracts, and oil essences. Many of these are a commodity grown worldwide; valerian, for instance, is cultivated in Belgium, France, Russia, China, Eastern Europe, and North America. It’s a generic mass-farmed commodity. That’s not so for the botanicals that are either native to a country or region — rooibos, from a tiny area of South Africa, for example — or that have wide variations between the best and the average: Vietnam lotus leaf versus generic Chinese, Bangladesh or Korean, for instance.
A few botanicals are tightly integrated into the very identity of a tea in terms of quality and processing. Earl Grey, for instance, at its very best is distinguished by its being flavored by bergamot, a citrus fruit grown only in Calabria, Italy, expensive and excellent. It takes 200 kilograms of fruit to make just one kilo of the real and rare bergamot essence. The average products use derivatives or substitute a wide range of bergamot natural and artificial flavorings, citrus extracts, and herbal blendings. Alibaba.com lists over 1,200 under “bergamot flavorings,” including fingered citron. The lowest-quality create the flavor from food-grade propylene glycol and ethyl alcohol “bergamot flavoring concentrate.” They are all labeled as “Earl Grey.”
Informed tea lovers understand, to varying degrees, the differences between, say, CTC and whole leaf, Kenyan and Assam blacks, ceremonial and culinary matcha, greens and whites, or first- and second-flush Darjeelings. But they are far less likely to be aware of similar differences among ingredients in scented, herbal, or infused teas. These are pervasive but easy to overlook. For instance, one of the most popular herbal teas is chamomile, noted as a sleeping aid. Most packages list just “chamomile.” If you are looking for Egyptian chamomile or prefer Roman over German, you won’t find any help here, even if you know that these varieties exist.
Are there real differences among them? Oh, yes, as much as there are among, say, Assam, Nilgiri, and Darjeeling teas. These are “Indian” but contrast strongly in their flavor and appeal. The same distinctions apply to “chamomile” teas. Roman chamomile has an apple-like fragrance, and its teas are noted for their anti-inflammatory and gastrointestinal properties. Teas made from the German variety (a genus rather than geographic source) are sweeter than other varieties, and more subtle.
Egyptian chamomile is generally rated as the best, by far. It’s grown in the Nile Valley in a region marked for its distinctive terroir — the combination of soil, environment, ecosystem, and bio-management — that produces the smoothest and fullest chamomile tea ingredient. The organic, loose-leaf full flower — no stems and broken pieces — is a far superior tea to the standard tea-bag chamomiles.
Spices
Many teas contain spices. Turmeric, ginger, and cinnamon are increasingly popular instances. Again, many of these are taken for granted with little information on quality and variety. A basic issue is the difference between natural and organic varieties, as well as many of the major commodity producers and packagers. Spices need to be kept safe. The standard mass market method is literally to “nuke ‘em.” Irradiation beams radiation on the spices, in large chambers. It is highly effective in destroying the DNA of microorganisms that cause food poisoning, and it also extends shelf life. But it reduces many dimensions of flavor and aroma. It is illegal to apply it to items labeled as “organic.” It is a base for the ground spices that dominate the market.
Again, information and education are largely lacking for the spiced tea segments. Chai is a useful illustration. Here’s the ingredients label for a Masala chai: “black tea, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper.” It’s excellent. Here’s another: “natural black tea, cinnamon, clove, cardamom, ginger.” It’s not so good. A third: “cardamon, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, black pepper, bay leaves.” The customer reviews amount to a collective “meh.” They are all in the same price range. There are more than 600 masala chais to choose from on Amazon, with the ingredients listed in the same way.
There’s not enough information to pick out the special ones. See the chart on this page for descriptions of the “best” of each of the main spices and the “average”.
Jasmine green
Jasmine green captures the extreme of quality coming from the flower. It is a wonderful tea, or quite a good one, or sort of OK. There are two forms: leaf and pearls. Pearls are tightly folded very small pellets. These store the flavors that expand when brewed. A teaspoon of Dragon Pearls unfolds to fill a third of a cup.
Both forms illustrate the extent to which the tea itself and how it is processes are not the primary determinants of the beverage. It is largely left unspecified in catalogs. One of the highest-rated online sellers lists nine jasmine greens. Here are the descriptions: carefully selected leaf sets, well-made leaves, base tea, bud sets, quality greens, green tea. A smaller provider of outstanding teas describes its jasmine greens as made from fresh and high-quality spring-plucked green tea. Rose congou similarly lists the tea as just a good/quality/fine China black and not of a specific variety, pedigree, or region.
That leaves plenty of space to provide detailed descriptions of the rose and jasmine. Quite literally, for jasmine this could total a short book. Here’s a minimalist summary:
Jasmine is grown in a number of Asian countries; India has an estimated 40 varieties. The market-leading jasmine for tea comes mainly from China’s Fujian and also Guangxi Province. The terroir and mild winter ensure a stronger and richer fragrance than in other regions, including Taiwan, whose sea-island climate produces a less-fresh flavor. Jasmine tea is also grown in Okinawa, Japan and in other farming regions of China, and mostly marketed in dried form.
The best jasmine has a brightness of color while lower quality jasmine has brownish spots from casual handling, mixed petal size and slight mold. These also result in a harsher and more astringent, or thin and flat, tea.
The jasmine flowers begin to bloom in Spring but these are inferior to those of the summer. There are three main cultivars: single-petal, the main variety; double-petal, hardier and more pungent; and multi-petal, milder and with a lower yield.
The tea-making sequence is meticulous and complex (the example applies to jasmine pearls rather than plain leaf jasmine tea):
Pluck and dry the harvested tea: either gently steam or apply warm air. Helps the leaf curl less so that there is a larger surface area for it to absorb the fragrances in the later scenting stages. Store in cool space till late summer when the blossoms are ready for harvesting. While most of the tea is green, there are a number of jasmine whites and oolongs, and even a few black teas.
Pluck during the hottest time of summer at midday when the blossoms are tightly closed to keep off the sun. As they dry, they burst open and are at their peak for scenting; the blossoms bloom at night.
Scenting may take a day to a week. It is a meticulous and repeated series of steps marked by gentle treatment. The basic method is to place a 10-15 centimeter layer of tea on a large tray-like surface and under a woven tray of the jasmine, with plenty of sieving, separating of petals and pieces, reduction and replacement, freshening, and repeating. The cycle may be carried out between 2 and 10 times. Timing has to be precise. The tea has to be bake-dried between each iteration.
Firing completes the process, removing all moisture. For the very best teas, a half-scenting finish may be added.
Obviously, this is a labor-intensive, skilled, lengthy, and costly process. And, of course, there are faster, and cheaper alternatives. The jasmine leaves may be “machine-disrupted” and shaped into loose pearls rather than the tight pellets of the best products. Flavoring and scented are made near-immediate through jasmine oils. Sometimes, teas and flowers are not stored to let their fragrances and flavors evolve and blend. And so on. Instead of using layers of tea leaf and flowers, the two can be mixed together to speed up the absorption of the jasmine fragrances and then separated out from each other.
Supply chain integration
As with tea, the herb, floral, and spice industry has increased its emphasis on supply chain improvement: standardization, transparency, authentication, supplier relationships and accountabilities, pesticide and contaminant control, testing, organic certification, and farmer support.
The challenge for the new flavored and scented tea producers is to harmonize the dual supply chain paths. Labeling is “lax” even in the EU where agricultural imports are tightly monitored. Customer information, education and knowledge are very limited. The websites of the leaders in premium specialty teas emphasize the exact nature of their ingredients – Egyptian chamomile, Brazilian ginger, etc., but tea buyers have to seek them out. Increasingly, good tea and good information go together.
Here are a few instances of the activity in the botanicals industry that aim at betterment of the supply chain. Many of the ingredients are used for products other than tea: nutritional supplements, health and beauty oils, foods, and perfumes:
Large company purchasers and processors: Starwest Botanicals’ high-tech testing stages cover: (1) identification of variety and source; (2) organoleptic analysis of color, flavor, and aroma; (3) physical review of purity and extraneous matter; (4) chemical evaluation of moisture, ash content, heavy metals, and pesticides; and (5) microbiological screening for salmonella, yeast, and mold.
Gaia Herbs’ products are packaged with a QR bar code that enables purchasers to track them back through all the stages, beginning with harvesting, and access DNA libraries and biomarkers. The German-based Martin Bauer group has committed to purchasing close to 60% of its 200 major botanicals from 80 countries through certified supply chains.
Associations and consortia committed to sustainable sourcing: a partnership between the American Botanical Council (ABC) and Sustainable Herbs Program (SHP) aimed at education of consumers, manufacturers, and growers “about what it takes to source high-quality, sustainable and ethically sourced” herbs. The Supplement Safety and Compliance Initiative is a retailer- and manufacturer-led program begun in 2016. The American Herbal Products Association has been active in creating a field audit methodology and helping standardization through collaborations among certifying bodies and underwriting labs.
Blockchain: China is the world leader in this technology infrastructure that seems sure to become the major force in integrating supply chain transactions, record-keeping, smart contracts, and payments. It is estimated to comprise close to half of all implementations, with tea one of its priorities as part of China’s government policy for regional agricultural development.
Botanicals are no longer a minor
For more and more specialty tea providers, the botanical is the selling point, the differentiator, and the effective brand. Its sets the standard for the beverage. It has moved from the periphery to the mainstream of the industry and is a major driver of innovation. Now, if only the information and education could keep up with the innovation.