Three products that get stored as one
The distinction Sprint 31 draws for buying matters again in the cupboard. A scented tea has taken an aroma into the leaf, so its aromatic fraction behaves broadly as the leaf’s own does and fades roughly in step with it. A flavoured tea carries a preparation applied to the surface of the leaf, which is volatile by construction and disperses on a schedule of its own — usually faster than anything in the leaf underneath. A blend containing visible botanical material — petals, peel, spice, dried fruit, roasted rice — contains several materials that each stale at their own rate, and the one that goes first sets when the product stops being what it was. Storing all three as though they were plain leaf produces three different disappointments. The scented tea is the easy case and needs nothing beyond the usual discipline for its base category. The flavoured tea needs to be bought in smaller quantities and drunk sooner than its base category would suggest. And the blend needs to be judged by its weakest component, which is frequently not the tea: an aged genmaicha tastes of stale rice long before its bancha has done anything much, and a fruit blend goes woody and dusty while its hibiscus is still perfectly colourful.
The surface problem
A flavouring applied to finished leaf sits where it is most exposed. That is why a flavoured tea smells dramatic in the packet and comparatively modest in the cup, and it is also why it loses that drama faster than a plain tea loses its own aroma: there is nothing between the volatile material and the air but the air. Every opening of the container replaces the headspace those compounds had begun to saturate, and the leaf gives up more to fill it again. The practical consequence is that headspace and openings matter more for a flavoured tea than for almost anything else in the cupboard, which inverts the usual assumption that these are the robust everyday products. A hundred grams of a flavoured black tea in a large tin opened daily will be noticeably duller within a couple of months, while the same leaf unflavoured would be fine for a year. The remedy is unglamorous: buy the size you will finish, keep the container full, and keep it closed. It is also the reason a flavoured tea is a poor candidate for the decorative display jar, despite being the tea most people are willing to display.
A source as well as a sink
Every storage page in this catalogue describes odour transfer as something that happens to tea. Flavoured and heavily scented teas run it in the other direction. An opened carton of a strongly flavoured tea will scent everything stored with it, including other bagged teas pressed against it in the same box; a jar of a fruit blend in a shared cupboard is a source with a wide reach; and a heavily smoked tea is the strongest emitter in most households. This is the mechanism behind the convergence of an assortment box, where after a few months the varieties resemble one another and the loudest one has won. The arrangement that follows is separation by loudness rather than by type: a container for the aromatic teas and a different one for the quiet ones, and never a delicate green tea sharing a tin with a jasmine or an Earl Grey. Container reuse follows the same rule and is permanent. A tin that has held a strongly flavoured tea has taken the flavouring into its lid gasket and its interior finish, and washing it introduces the one thing that does more damage than the residue. The correct response is to keep using it for the same kind of tea.
The botanicals in the packet, and what they do first
Dried fruit is the component that most often decides a blend’s life. Pieces of apple, pear, papaya and the rest carry more residual moisture than the tea around them, they are hygroscopic in their own right, and in a damp cupboard they soften, clump and eventually spoil while the leaf is still dry. In a very dry cupboard they harden and go woody. Citrus peel loses its oils quickly and then contributes little but bitterness. Petals fade visually long before they stop contributing, which misleads people in both directions. Whole spices keep well and ground ones do not, which is why a chai with whole cardamom pods survives a year and a pre-ground masala blend does not. Roasted rice in genmaicha stales on the same schedule as any roasted grain and produces a distinctly tired note when it does. The useful habit is to inspect a blend rather than only smelling it: pieces that have clumped together or darkened have taken up moisture, and a blend whose fruit has gone sticky belongs in the same category as a musty tea rather than a merely faded one.
Where the base tea still matters
It is easy to conclude that the flavouring dominates so completely that the base is irrelevant to storage, and for a strongly flavoured product that is nearly true — the flavouring will fade first and the tea underneath will still be serviceable when the product has stopped being interesting. The exceptions are the ones worth naming. A lightly scented green tea, a good jasmine, and the better fruit-scented whites are built on fragile bases and are governed by the base’s clock rather than by the addition, which is why a jasmine silver needle should be treated with green-tea discipline and not as a flavoured product. A blend built on a robust black base is governed by the addition. And a scented tea has been fired again after scenting, so its base has been through more processing than an unscented equivalent and has usually been chosen for its ability to survive that — which makes a good jasmine more robust than its delicacy in the cup suggests. Reading which component sets the clock is the whole of the decision, and the answer is generally whichever of the two is the more fragile rather than whichever is the more prominent.
Buying accordingly
Three adjustments to the general purchasing rule. Buy flavoured teas in smaller quantities than their base category would suggest, since the clock belongs to the addition. Judge them on smell at the point of opening rather than on any printed date, because a durability estimate for a flavoured tea is usually inherited from the base and describes the wrong component. And prefer sellers with fast turnover, since almost nobody prints the date a tea was blended or scented and stock that has sat is indistinguishable from stock that has not. For blends with visible material, tip a little out and look at it before deciding whether the packet is still good, which is a check that works with no expertise at all. And where a household keeps both flavoured and plain teas, decide the separation once — two containers, two places — rather than rediscovering the problem each time a cup of something quiet tastes faintly of bergamot. None of this makes flavoured tea a lesser product. It makes it a product with a different failure mode, which is exactly the argument this catalogue makes about every other category as well.