Jasmine tea is the precious species of scented tea, it has a history for more than 700 years. Some people describe the jasmine tea as you can smell spring within scented tea in China. It is also one of the best natural health products among China and all over the world.
The Scenting process (Chinese is called "窨制") is mainly to release the fragrance of flowers and tea. The process of fragrance-releasing is a chemical change. By the functions of enzyme, temperature, water and oxygen, the ripe jasmine petal gives out the fragrant materials, and along with the increase of fragrance absorption, the tea gets more water absorption. Under such condition, it arouses the chemical change. The tea soup becomes bright yellow colour and tastes mellow, which form the special fragrance, colour and taste of scented tea.
As the picture shows the whole cycle of scenting process for jasmine tea. A whole scenting process have 6 steps, which including: picking new flowers, selecting flowers, mixing tea with flowers, fragrance-releasing process, rolling, and separating flowers & tea.
More premium level's jasmine tea requires more cycles of scenting process. The highest standard of jasmine tea usually have at least 3-5 cycles of scenting process.
Once scenting process finished, the flowers are already withered and no more fragrance left. Tea maker would like to take out the flowers and only keep the scented tea. When we brewing the tea, the high temperature water will not have the change to burn the flowers and no more bitter flavour released.
Jasmine tea is made by stirring tea-leaves and matching fresh jasmine. Since the jasmine tea uses green tea as tea basement, someone classified it as green tea. But there are some jasmine teas taking white tea as tea basement. Jasmine tea has the function of dispelling cold and depression, so it is a good choice as spring tea.
Silver Needle Jasmine White tea (茉莉银针) and Jasmine Pearls (Buddhas Tears 茉莉龙珠)
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