Jasmine-scented green tea
A finished green tea re-enters the factory in the flowering season and goes round a loop — layer with fresh blossom, screen it out, re-dry — as many as nine times.
What makes this route what it is
The route begins with a completed tea, and its central operation is a loop rather than a step. Each turn of the loop costs the base tea another pass through a drier, which is the constraint nobody advertising a round count mentions: more rounds means more aroma and a more tired base leaf, and the best jasmine is a balance rather than a maximum.
The route, in order
Each note describes what the step is doing in this route. The same operation does a different job in a different chain.
The base tea is picked in spring, months before the flowers exist. Most jasmine bases are ordinary green teas chosen for their capacity to absorb rather than for their own character.
Ordinary green tea fixation. Nothing about the base manufacture anticipates the scenting.
Twisted or curled. Tighter leaf absorbs more slowly and holds aroma longer, which is a real consideration in choosing a base.
The base tea is finished here and stored until the jasmine flowers. Basket-dried greens dominate the trade because they stay open and take up aroma readily.
- 5.
Scenting
Layering with fresh unopened buds overnight while they open. Repeated four to nine times with entirely fresh flowers each round, which is what the grades count.
Screening the spent blossom out after every round. Leaving it in is not a shortcut with a small cost; the flowers break down and take the tea with them.
Re-drying between rounds to remove the moisture the flowers gave the leaf. This is the operation that limits how many rounds a delicate base can survive.
Final screening. In the top grades the finished tea contains no visible flower at all, which is the opposite of what most buyers look for.
How it differs from its neighbours
A route described on its own teaches very little. The useful fact is always which other route it is nearly identical to, and where it leaves it.
This route inserts an operation the other does not have. Nothing is substituted and nothing is removed.
Everything through step four is an ordinary green tea that could have been sold as one. The scenting loop is added months later to a finished product, which is why a scented tea sits awkwardly in a scheme that classifies teas by their defining manufacturing step.
Where it goes wrong
Leaving the spent flowers in is the cheap version and it gives a heavy, stewed, faintly rotten edge that is easy to mistake for strength. Spraying with jasmine oil rather than layering with blossom is the cheaper version still, and visible dried flowers in the packet are usually a sign of one or the other rather than of quality.
In full
Jasmine tea is made twice and in two different seasons. The base green tea is manufactured in spring and set aside; the jasmine flowers in high summer; and the scenting is done when the flowers are available, on a tea that has been finished and stored for months. The operation exploits the fact that dry tea leaf is highly absorbent. Fresh unopened buds are layered with the leaf in the evening, they open overnight and release their volatiles, and by morning they are spent. They are screened out — if they stay in, they break down and the whole lot goes stale — the leaf is re-dried to take out the moisture the flowers gave it, and the loop begins again with an entirely fresh charge of blossom. A premium tea goes round four to nine times. The final short round, ti hua, is for a fresh top note rather than for absorption, and whether its flowers are removed is where the grades diverge.