The Best Flavored Tea Pluckings

If you’re new to flavored teas, no doubt you’re wondering how to choose flavored teas of the best quality. The variety of the tea, the country in which it’s grown, the way it’s processed, the time it’s harvested and the way it’s flavored all affect the way a flavored tea will taste. In many varieties of tea, the time of harvest is particularly important, and can be difficult to understand and determine.

Following is some information that can help you choose the best flavored teas based on their harvest time. Flavored teas come in white, green, black and oolong varieties, and all varieties have different harvesting requirements for the best flavor.

How Are Flavored Teas Different From Other Teas

Some of the world’s most popular and most widely consumed teas are flavored teas. Adding flavors to tea is centuries old and is a wonderful way to add a new dimension to a favorite variety of tea. With the many combinations of tea varieties and flavorings, nearly any taste is possible. Flavored teas have become as much a part of the world’s tea drinking traditions as the teas that are used to create them.

Flavored teas are different from herb teas, also known as tisanes. Herb teas, or tisanes are not actually teas at all. True teas all come from the camellia sinensis plant. Flavored teas simply have additional flavorings, such as fruits, flowers, herbs or spices added to them for additional flavor. Herbal teas are actually a brew made from the herbs themselves.

What Are Flavored Teas?

The tradition of flavoring tea goes back many centuries. Nearly as long as tea has been made it has been flavored. However, it is said that the idea for flavoring tea came about as a bit of an accident. Many years ago tea gardeners in China planted other trees to provide shade and moisture for their tea plants.

They soon discovered that the tea trees that were planted near certain trees, such as peach, plum magnolia and apricot trees produced teas that had absorbed the aroma and flavor of the fruit and flower tree’s blossoms. You’ll note that some teas are considered flavored, while others are considered scented. Flavored teas actually taste of the addition used, while scented teas have merely absorbed the addition’s fragrance.

What Is Oolong Tea?

One variety of tea that is very popular in Asia but just gaining recognition in the US is oolong tea. Sometimes referred to as Wulong tea, as well, oolong literally means black dragon. Wulong, however, refers to the originator of the tea Wu Liang. According to Chinese legend, Wu Liang was busy collecting and processing tea leaves when he spotted a river deer. He stopped to kill and prepare the deer and it interrupted his tea processing for the day, and he forgot to dry out the leaves.

He remembered the tea a day later. By this time it had begun to change color, and Wu Liang was afraid it had gone bad, but decided to finish drying it anyway. After completing the drying process, he made himself a cup and found that he had created a very flavorful and aromatic tea - and oolong was born.