Jasmine In Tea — Jasmine in Tea: The Ancient Art of Scenting a Leaf — is one of the topics we explore on The Tea Story blog, drawing on our direct experience growing, processing, and tasting tea from our own garden in West Garo Hills, Meghalaya.
The jasmine used in tea is almost universally Jasminum sambac — Arabian jasmine — a small, white-flowered vine with a fragrance that concentrates into something approaching a physical presence when it is in full bloom. The flowers are harvested at night, when their scent is at its peak, because jasmine aroma compounds are volatile and begin to dissipate quickly after the flower opens in the heat of the day.
The technique of scenting tea with jasmine flowers is documented in Chinese texts from the Song dynasty (960–1279 CE) and has remained essentially unchanged since: fresh flowers are layered with partially-dried tea leaves and left together for several hours. The tea absorbs the floral aromatics through what is partly physical adsorption and partly a gentle moisture exchange between the fresh flowers and the dry leaf. The flowers are then removed, the tea is re-dried to remove the moisture they introduced, and the process may be repeated several times for higher grades.
Why the Process Works
Tea leaves are exceptional at absorbing aromatic compounds. This is the same property that makes it essential to store tea away from other strongly-scented foods — a bag of green tea near coffee beans will not taste like green tea for long. In jasmine scenting, this property is used intentionally and precisely: the leaf picks up the jasmine’s aromatic profile without the flower itself entering the final product.
The result is a tea that carries jasmine’s fragrance in a form that is different from, and often more nuanced than, adding jasmine to hot water directly. The volatiles that the tea leaf has absorbed are released when hot water is added, flooding the air above the cup with the scent before you have even raised it. This anticipatory aroma — the steam carrying the fragrance before the first sip — is a significant part of what makes jasmine tea a distinctive experience.
The scent of jasmine tea is not fragrance applied to tea. It is fragrance absorbed by tea — a one-way transfer that cannot be undone and that cannot be mimicked by artificial flavouring without the result smelling like soap rather than flowers.
Jasmine on Different Tea Bases
Jasmine can be used to scent green tea, white tea, or orthodox black tea, and the base changes the character of the final cup significantly. On green tea — the most common pairing — the jasmine adds floral complexity to the naturally vegetal, slightly grassy base, creating a cup where neither element dominates and the combination is more interesting than either component alone. On white tea, the jasmine reads as lighter and more ethereal. On black tea, the jasmine has to work harder to be perceived above the robustness of the base but can produce a genuinely beautiful result in skilled hands.
Our Jasmine Green Tea
Our Jasmine Green Tea is built on the same West Garo Hills green tea base as our other green varieties, with jasmine scenting applied to the dried leaf. The Meghalaya base has a natural sweetness and low tannin content that allows the jasmine to express itself more clearly than it would on a more assertive tea. The result is a cup where the floral note is present but not overwhelming — jasmine as a top note on a smooth, rounded base, in the proportion that makes the tea worth drinking rather than merely worth smelling.