White floral
The broad intrinsic floral band — gardenia, honeysuckle, lilac, lily, blossom — that the leaf produces without anything being added to it.
This is the general floral character of lightly oxidised and lightly worked teas: high-mountain oolong, silver needle, first-flush Darjeeling, many Taiwanese and Chinese greens. Tasters reach for whichever flower is locally familiar, which is why the catalogue holds gardenia, honeysuckle, lilac, hyacinth, lily, narcissus and a scatter of unqualified 'floral' strings that all point at the same band. The chemistry behind it is a family of terpene alcohols — linalool and geraniol are the ones usually named — and it is worth being careful about how that is stated. Popular tea writing frequently attributes a tea's floral aroma to a single compound, which overstates what is known: the aroma is produced by a group of related volatiles in proportions that vary by cultivar, by season and by how the leaf was withered, and no one of them is the smell on its own. Nineteen distinct surface strings collapse into this record, which is a fair picture of how loosely the word 'floral' is used.
Which sense this is
Aroma. Volatile compounds, smelled through the nose or retronasally while drinking. Nearly all descriptive tea vocabulary is here, including words people say they can taste.
Compound descriptor. A familiar thing used as shorthand for a mixture of sensations. Nobody detects 'chestnut' — they recognise it.
Where it comes from
- Established chemistry
A family of terpene alcohols, linalool and geraniol among them, contributes the floral band. This is a group effect and not a one-to-one mapping — attributing a tea's floral aroma to a single named compound overstates what is established.
The chemical route is identified in the literature. Often a family of related compounds rather than one named molecule.
- Processing step
Long, gentle withering and light handling preserve it; hard rolling and heavy firing bury it. This is much of why white tea and high-mountain oolong read floral and CTC black tea does not.
A named production step reliably produces it. A statement about practice, not about chemistry.
Processing: process-withering, processing-solar-withering. Types: type-white-tea, type-oolong-tea.
Not to be confused with
- Scented floral (Aroma) — Jasmine, rose and osmanthus — the three flowers that are put into tea, as opposed to the flowers tea is compared to.
The phrases this covers
Editors write tasting notes in their own words. These are the exact phrases in the catalogue that this descriptor accounts for — the mapping is authored phrase by phrase, so nothing is grouped by a rule that guessed.
alpine flowers · citrus blossom · cut flowers · dried flowers · floral top notes · florals · flowers · gardenia · ginger lily · honeysuckle · hyacinth · light floral · light florals · lilac · lily · lotus · narcissus · pomelo blossom · white flowers · wildflower
Teas whose notes resolve to this
Derived from the tasting notes on each tea, not assigned by hand.
- Alishan oolong
- Anji Bai Cha
- Assam first flush
- Bai Hao Yin Zhen (Silver Needle)
- Bai Ji Guan
- Bai Mudan
- Bai Mudan Wang
- Baozhong
- Bi Luo Chun
- Cui Yu
- Da Yu Ling
- Darjeeling first flush
- Darjeeling green tea
- Darjeeling white tea
- Dong Pian
- Duyun Mao Jian
- Fushou Shan
- Gong Mei
- High mountain oolong
- Huang Guan Yin
- Huang Jin Gui
- Huang Zhi Xiang Dan Cong
- Jasmine green tea
- Jiang Hua Xiang Dan Cong
- Jin Jun Mei
- Jin Shan Cui Ya
- Jin Xuan
- Jingmai sheng pu-erh
- Kangra tea
- Kenyan orthodox black tea
- Korean green tea
- Li Shan
- Ling Tou Dan Cong
- Mao Xie
- Nepal black tea
- Nilgiri
- Nuwara Eliya
- Orthodox black tea
- Phoenix Dan Cong
- Qing Xiang Tie Guan Yin
- Sheng pu-erh (raw)
- Si Ji Chun
- Sikkim (Temi)
- Song Yang Yin Hou
- Tie Guan Yin
- Ujeon
- Vietnamese lotus tea
- Wenshan Baozhong
- Wuyi Shui Xian
- Ya Shi Xiang Dan Cong
- You Hua Xiang
- Yunnan silver needle
- Zhi Lan Xiang Dan Cong
Nearby
A tasting note is a comparison, not a measurement. Where the route from leaf to sensation is established it is labelled as such above; where it is not, the page says so rather than supplying a mechanism the descriptor has not earned. See the rest of the vocabulary for how the axes divide up.