Jasmine tea in China, and the other flower teas

What jasmine tea is

Jasmine tea is a scented tea, one of the reprocessed teas that UNESCO counts alongside China’s six basic categories when it lists ‘over 2,000 tea products’. The base is most often green tea, although white, oolong and black teas are also used. In Chinese it is 茉莉花茶 (mòlìhuā chá) or 香片 (xiāngpiàn), ‘fragrant slices’.

The flowers give the scent, not the substance. In good jasmine tea the spent blossoms are sifted out after each round, so what you brew is mostly tea leaf. That also means it has caffeine: a green-tea jasmine carries roughly the caffeine of green tea, which Mayo Clinic puts at about 29 mg per 8 oz (237 ml) cup.[7][3][10]

Fuzhou: where jasmine tea was invented

According to the FAO, jasmine reached China from India and was planted in Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province, in the Western Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 9). By the Northern Song (960–1127) Fuzhou was known as China’s ‘capital of jasmine’ and jasmine tea had originated there; the scenting technique matured in the Ming, and in the Qing jasmine tea was sold at home and to Europe, America and Southeast Asia. Fujian’s provincial government adds that in the Qing it was produced commercially on a large scale and sent as tribute to the court.

Because tea and jasmine need different conditions, Fuzhou farmers grew them at different levels of the same landscape: jasmine on riverside plains and shoals, tea on terraces generally above 200 metres. On 1 May 2014 the UN Food and Agriculture Organization designated the Fuzhou Jasmine and Tea Culture System a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System. The Fuzhou jasmine tea scenting technique is also on China’s national intangible cultural heritage list, in the fourth batch.[1][2][4]

Jasmine dragon pearls

Jasmine dragon pearls (also sold as jasmine pearls) are jasmine-scented green tea leaves hand-rolled into small balls. They unfurl slowly in hot water, so the flavour comes out gradually over several infusions. Jasmine is also made on oolong, which is rolled into balls and tastes sweeter and less astringent than the green-tea version.[3]

Osmanthus tea and other Chinese flower teas

Osmanthus tea (桂花茶, guìhuāchá) is made by infusing the tiny, strongly scented flowers of sweet osmanthus with green or black tea leaves. The flowers, white, pale yellow or orange, bloom in late summer and autumn, which ties osmanthus to the Mid-Autumn Festival: osmanthus wine is drunk as a family ‘reunion wine’, and osmanthus cakes, teas and sweet rice balls are eaten. Chinese myth even puts an osmanthus tree on the moon, endlessly felled by Wu Gang.

Osmanthus is the city flower of Guilin, Hangzhou and Suzhou. Guilin’s name means ‘cassia grove’; the character 桂 (guì) now chiefly means sweet osmanthus, which is widely grown there. Osmanthus and chrysanthemum also go into eight-treasure tea (八宝茶, bābǎo chá), served to honoured guests in Xinjiang and Ningxia with tea leaves, dried longans, rock sugar and wolfberries. Chrysanthemum on its own is the other big Chinese flower drink, though it contains no tea: see chrysanthemum tea.[8][9][12]