Best Tea and Honey Growing Expertise in Your Tea Palette
Citrus Green is a good example of a sweetener lightening the astringency of a green tea.
When tasting a variety of teas it is important to remember the base flavors of each of the basic tea types, which are black, green and oolong. Black tea should bring a strong flavor of rose, rose petals, or even rose hips to mind. A good green tea such as the Citrus Green, pictured here, always evokes a strong sense of grass. Oolong tea sits somewhere in between the two. Every tea made from the Camillia Sinenesis plant has an astringent element in it, which is to say a faint and slightly bitter flavor that causes a barely perceptible puckering effect. The most interesting flavors associated with good teas is called earthiness. Earthiness is highly valued in a tea because it tends to replace the astringent elements of a strong brew, common to all the basic types. Pure sugar and other sweeteners generally work well with most teas, although a tea with a strong element of earthiness loses something when oversweetened. Keep these notes in mind when shopping for a new, imported loose-leaf tea at our host’s website, Red Leaf Tea!