I would like to say here that I have no significant problems with flavored teas. I’ll drink whatever chocolate-rasberry-mocha rooibus you offer me, if I’m in the mood. What is Earl Grey if not just a very common flavored tea? Smokey Lapsang Souchong? Jasmine green tea? Flavoured tea is delicious, especially when paired with light, cafe-fare foods such as macaroons or little delicate cakes. I would recommend treating yourself to Harney and Sons’ Paris. It’s a good ceylon with specific flavors of vanilla, caramel, and something extra.
Now here’s where I’m going to express some differences. Flavoured tea is bad. At least, it’s never the best. Naturally, the flavored part of tea is going to be the part you focus on. There is no way you’re going to drink something that tastes like guava melon and strawberry and focus on the oolong underneath. Because of this masking effect, I find that a lot of tea used to make flavored tea is medium – at best – in quality and often Ceylon. Although I’m sure organic flavorings exist, I wonder what chemicals are in flavored teas? With pure whole leaf tea, you know what’s in it. With many traditional flavored teas, you might know exactly what’s in it: pine smoke for the Lapsang Souchong, bergamot for the Earl – and for your St. Dalfours Organic Peppermint tea, you’ve got peppermint.
With some flavored teas, you haven’t a clue what’s in them. For instance, how and where, exactly, do they get the flavor for the myriad varieties Teavana promises? Youthberry Wild Orange Blossom Tea Blend sounds good, but why should it need additional flavors? It already contains orange blossoms, hibiscus, little yummy looking bits of candied fruit and youthberries, which I assume are immature elderberries.
Recently I tried a Zesty Lime rooibus. It’s very zesty, but it clearly lacks true lime. What did they put into my tea? Partially because it’s low quality tea, and partially because the flavor is strong like an old woman who carries water from the well every day, I find that flavored tea often over brews easily. Easily – with painful results. A failed pot is a double slap in the face, because resteeping flavored tea is like expecting to reuse a firework. You can try, but success is essentially failure (I’m delighted by the way to read about that flavored tea you found that survives a second steeping. Go on, I’m all ears.)
There is a real, tangible, philosophical problem. Flavored tea is designed for the intent of smelling like typically, one thing. That one thing might be “Norweigian Sunset” and it might smell like snow and lutefisk. When tea is supposed to taste like something, we begin to think it is supposed to taste a certain way. It stops being the taste of Earl Grey tea, and instead becomes Earl Grey Flavour. This is not how tea is supposed to taste, and in fact, deviations from the norm are what makes tea special. Tea is so amazing because it has so many different natural flavors all from one plant. One can use words like “stone fruit” and “old wood” to try and approximate the true taste of tea, but it’s fully itself in reality. It’s like your dog. You might have named him Henry, and he might know that you call him Henry, but the dog you know by Henry lives by his own rules, and might not even need a human moniker to be the most dominant alpha in the world below knee height.
Good tea should carry itself based on its own merit, anyway. Imagine a world in which we used only the tea that was convenient because we relied more on what we added to it. Matcha and its associated culture would wither. We’d lose the complex beauty of a good pu’er. The unique taste of yellow. Flavoured tea is tasty, but most teas are worth having with no help from sprays, oils, and mysterious ingredients.
I have to agree with you about non organic flavorings. I suspect most people don’t even consider this factor in their tea. I’ve come to accept that there is an large audience for flavored tea. Truth be told, my first green tea was flavored with lemongrass by Traditional Medicinal. Given that I was brewing it incorrectly, I wouldn’t have been able to drink it if it hadn’t be subtly flavored. Subtly flavored is key. Another option would be to add a bit of lemon or blood orange which may help newbies begin to explore whole leaf green tea more comfortably. In my experience, people assume green tea tastes bitter and unfortunately when over heated and over steeped, it is bitter. Without making too much of a fuss about brewing issues, the fresh fruit can be very helpful. Unlike milk or cream which negatively impact the polyphenols, fruit is said to potentially enhance them. Also adding sugar is exactly the opposite of what a healthy beverage needs. It’s ultimately best to enjoy tea straight up – neat! (said the purist)
I enjoy my tea the most without sarcasm. It is without the addition of negativity that makes it so much more to my taste.
I think bad tea is bad tea regardless of whether it’s blended or not. I’ve had just ‘rotten’ awful Longjing and incredible tea and herbal blends…and vice versa. What’s incredibly time-consuming when putting together teas to offer customers is finding the best tasting teas and herbals whether or not they are blends. I think the art of coming up with blends that are amazing is very rare, but so is finding just incredible tea period.
Here here Ben Dane, I just think the so called second steep is mythical, like chupacabra. Marketing that as a plus is a bummer.