I like floral flavours
Two legs that pull apart a word doing too much work. Floral covers flowers you can smell from the doorway and flowers you have to hunt for in the cup, and a reader who likes one may well dislike the other — so they are separated here rather than blended.
Who this is for
Someone who already likes floral infusions and wants to know how wide the range is before settling.
What you should come away with
Knowing which end of floral you actually like, which is the difference between buying osmanthus and buying blue mallow.
Leg 1 · Flowers that carry across a room
Loud aromatics, in descending order of how forgiving they are. All three are easy to overdo and the third needs a shorter steep than the first.
Starting point. Everything after this is measured against it.
Apricot and honey, sweet and light, with almost no body of its own. It works better scenting something else than standing alone.
Why this step follows
Two flowers whose aroma carries across a room. Gardenia is heavier and closer to cream, and it is routinely sold as jasmine, which is worth knowing before you buy either.
Enormously perfumed and quite bitter, with a curious savoury note as it cools that puts some people off entirely. Used in small quantities in blends for that reason.
Why this step follows
From an open flower to a closed bud. Magnolia bud is sharper and more medicinal in aroma and needs a shorter steep, so the technique changes as well as the plant.
Perfumed with a distinct cooling camphor note, and more bitter than its scent suggests. Used sparingly in blends for exactly that reason.
Leg 2 · Flowers that are nearly silent
The opposite problem. These give colour, texture and very little aroma, and the exercise is finding the small amount of flavour that is there rather than expecting the previous leg again.
Starting point. Everything after this is measured against it.
Powdery and faintly sweet when the material is good, and close to tasteless when it is not. The scent characteristically disappears and returns as you smell it, which is a property of the aroma compounds rather than of your nose.
Why this step follows
Two quiet flowers where colour does more work than flavour. Blue mallow shifts the water towards blue and gives almost nothing to the taste, which is the point of the comparison.
Very mild with a noticeably slippery mouthfeel, which is more distinctive than the flavour. The colour is the reason it is in the packet.
Why this step follows
Both are near-silent in the cup. Red clover has a faint hay sweetness that blue mallow lacks — a small enough difference that finding it is the exercise.
Gently sweet and hay-like with a faint vanilla note that comes out as the material dries. Very mild, and easily lost in a blend with anything assertive.
Read alongside
- Floral infusions
Infusions made from flowers rather than leaves, roots or fruit. A category defined by plant part, which makes it the most botanically coherent of the herbal groupings.
- East Asian flower infusions
The largest flower-drinking tradition in the world, and the one least described in English. Which flowers, which grades, and the scenting practice that connects them to tea.
- Flowers used in herbal drinks
The flower group is the most fragile of the botanical categories and the one where handling shows most clearly in the cup.