Jasmine Tea and Jasmine Pearls: How Jasmine Green Tea Is Scented

Our 2016 story placed scented teas on a spectrum, “from the bold and fruity citrus bergamot flavor of Earl Grey to the soft scented aromatic infusions of jasmine, rose and osmanthus petals at the other end.” Jasmine sits at the soft end.

The range is wide. The same story names Jasmine Pearls, jasmine Silver Needle white, jasmine Jade oolong and jasmine green, and notes that jasmine has mainly been used to add a delicate scent to outstanding Chinese green and white teas, though blenders now add it to oolongs, white teas and a few black teas in the style of an Earl Grey. Jasmine oolong is a little fuller than jasmine green.

That makes jasmine a good first step for people who drink flavored teas from tea bags and expect a big, fruity jolt. It lets a subtler flavor unfold, and it pairs with light food, one of the few teas that does. For the base tea itself, see What is green tea?

Traditional scenting is slow. Fresh petals are placed next to the leaf as it dries, not as an essence or dried blossom. It takes around four hours for the tea to absorb the scent, after which the petals are removed. The process is repeated two or three times for ordinary grades and up to ten times for the best, and the whole sequence may take a month before the leaf is fired again to dry it.

After the final firing, the blossoms may be removed or left in the tea. One reader put the purist case on our blog in 2016: the best jasmine tea should contain no petals at all, because thousands of fresh flowers are laid on the leaf and painstakingly removed the next day.

What decides the quality

• The flowers: single- and double-petal flowers give a subtler scent than multi-petal ones.
• The bud-petal ratio: how much flower is laid against how much leaf shapes the strength of the scent.
• The baking: how many times the jasmine and leaf are lightly baked to smooth the infusion.
• The leaf itself: a fine base tea makes a fine jasmine; some low-priced jasmine greens are undistinguished.

In all, scenting can take “anywhere from 24 hours to many weeks.” Cheaper jasmine teas use jasmine petals or jasmine flavoring instead of fresh-flower scenting.

Jasmine pearls are scented green tea leaves rolled into small balls, green leaf and white jasmine almost woven together. When brewed, just a few dozen pearls unfurl to fill half a cup. The leaves are rolled after scenting and formed into balls once they are dry, which is why the pearls look so striking.

That unfurling makes them a favorite for showing friends what loose leaf can do. In our starter’s guide to leaf tea, our founder suggested exactly this trick: brew a tea whose leaf expands from a dry spoonful to half a cup when wet, such as a Tie Guan Yin oolong or a jasmine pearl green.

Our 2016 blog called jasmine teas “a green tea for people who don’t like green tea,” because a good one has none of the bitterness or grassiness some people dislike, with a long, almost perfumed aftertaste. It also gave a fair warning: jasmine is a perfume, and many tea lovers prefer it as an occasional cup. Its advice for a friend who hates green tea: bring out the jasmine pearls.

Indian gardens in the Nilgiris and Darjeeling have been adding jasmine to green teas to enhance good leaf rather than mask a poor one. That is very different from many scented teas, “most especially Earl Grey, where the flower or fruit flavor is very strong.”

Our own jasmine green is a blend of Indian jasmine and high-grown green tea. Try Green Tea Jasmine Soothe, whole-leaf green tea blended with jasmine flowers: mellow and refreshing, with a gentle floral aroma. Its ingredients are green tea, jasmine flowers and a natural jasmine flavor, so we call it a blended jasmine tea, not a scented one. In the cup it is bright green, opening on a delicate frame of jasmine that gradually gains intensity.

Our jasmine blends over the years

Jasmine has been in our range from the start. When our staff voted for their favorite teas of 2015, first place went to Jasmine Jade, a green tea with jasmine. Gopal, from our procurement team, called it “a perfect blend, where dry jasmine flower and curly tea leaves truly complements each other. Fragrant and delicate, and also very seductive.” A colleague in our design team liked it because other jasmine teas had tasted of “a strange artificial flavored-oil.”

Later jasmine blends included Morning Dew, a Nilgiri green with jasmine, marigold and cornflower, and a Jasmine Earl Grey of Nilgiri tea, jasmine, marigold, cornflower and bergamot. A Nilgiri Jasmine Black went into our 2019 Diwali heritage box.

This complex process invites shortcuts, and jasmine green, the most popular kind, is where they show. Our longtime contributor Peter Keen warned that jasmine green “is regularly enhanced with a little extra chemical sheen to make it bright, shiny and not the grade it is claimed to be.” The fine teas he admired, such as Chinese jasmine pearls and jasmine Silver Needle, “combine leaf and petal, not dust and additive.”

• Look at the leaf: whole, curled or rolled leaf is a better sign than leaf with an unnaturally bright, shiny sheen.
• Smell and taste: the jasmine should come across as fresh flowers, not as an artificial, flavored-oil taste.
• Taste the finish: the best stand out for their aftertaste, almost a perfume, with the tea still clear beneath it.
• Read the label: petals plus natural flavor make a blended jasmine; fresh-flower scenting is a slower, costlier process.

Brew jasmine green as you would any green tea: 75–80°C for 2 to 3 minutes. For more, see What is green tea?