Flavors in Tea Blends: Spices, Flowers, Herbs, Citrus, Fruit and Wine

Spices are the heart of Indian tea. Cardamom adds a sweet, perfumed note and is the most common chai spice; ginger gives warmth and bite; cinnamon brings sweetness; a pinch of black pepper, or even cayenne, adds heat. Spiced black tea brewed with milk is masala chai: see What is chai?

Our Kashmiri Saffron Rose Chai takes the idea further, with saffron strands, rose petals and green cardamom. Our tasting notes describe a cup that starts with distinct notes of saffron, which lend a pleasant sweetness, before the more fragrant rose comes in toward the finish. It joined our range in September 2019.

Saffron was also in the very first blend Shruti made for us, Kesar Delight: “Darjeeling white tea generously blended with saffron strands, with a sprinkling of lemongrass and chamomile flowers.”

Spices beyond chai

Spices are not only for milky chai. When Nagendranath Chiluvuru, then our R&D head, made our 2016 Diwali blends, he found that “black pepper, cardamom, and ginger – just pop, while the fancier vanilla, saffron, red pepper, and even chocolate and lavender add some indulgence.” That collection included Spice Sparkler, topped with pink pepper, and Jasmine Spice, a spice and floral blend.

In Kashmir, green tea is spiced instead, with saffron, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and almonds: see Kashmiri kahwa.

Jasmine is the classic partner for green tea (more on it in Jasmine tea and jasmine pearls). Rose petals and buds add fragrance and a soft sweetness to black, green and white teas: Green Tea Rose Glow blends rose petals with whole-leaf green tea. Its lime-green cup opens on soft tones of rose with fruity undertones, and gentle vegetal notes come through toward the end. Alongside the petals, it uses a natural rose flavor.

Mountain Rose

Our Mountain Rose is one of the first floral blends our tea masters created. Shruti made it in 2015, inspired by Indian desserts. Give it a moment in the cup and it may remind you of payasam, the south Indian milk pudding scented with rose and cardamom.

Look closely at the dry leaf and you will see long black leaves with red and blue flowers: the red is rose, the blue is cornflower, which is listed among its ingredients. In the cup it turns dark amber, with no astringency and notes of rose, jasmine, cardamom and cream.

It is also our most romantic tea. Our founder, Kausshal Dugarr, counted “178 orders of our best seller Mountain Rose just before Valentine’s Day” in a post from May 2022: “That’s about 8 kgs of rose consumed in TEA!”

Other flowers

Other flowers go further afield: geranium, marigold, cornflower and lavender all have a place in the blender’s palette. Our past Rose Mist paired white tea with pink rose buds, a floral, sweet cup. Black Opal was a black tea with cornflower, orange and yellow marigold and jasmine, and Morning Dew set jasmine, marigold and cornflower on a high-grown Nilgiri green tea.

Kewra, the screwpine flower used in Indian sweets, brings rose-like notes. Our Kewra Delight Oolong combined it with chocolate, cardamom and a floral oolong for Diwali. For a gentle floral white still on sale, see Ivory Geranium Blossom in Which flavors go with which teas?

Mint is the most refreshing addition of all. Moroccan mint, green tea with mint leaves, is the famous example. Our own version used rolled winter flush green tea with spearmint and peppermint, steeped hot or cold. Basil, and its Indian cousin tulsi, adds a fresh, slightly peppery note to green tea.

Mint also mixes well with spice. Our 2016 Diwali collection had Mint Jubilee, a green tea built on mint and fennel. Lemongrass and chamomile are softer: Shruti used both, with saffron, to round out a Darjeeling white tea in Kesar Delight.

When an herb is blended with tea, the cup still has the caffeine of its tea. When there is no tea at all, it is a tisane: see Herbal tea (tisanes).

Some flavors come from natural oils or extracts. The best known is bergamot, a fragrant citrus fruit whose oil turns black tea into Earl Grey. Our Classic Earl Grey Citrus Black uses Assam black tea, which gives a sweet, malty, caramel-like base, with pure bergamot extract for the citrus. The full story is in Earl Grey tea.

The base is a TGFOP1 grade Assam: short, narrow, brownish-black leaves with a few golden tips. It brews rich reddish-brown, and our tasters call it intensely sweet, robust and brisk, with notes of caramel, bergamot and malt.

How we learned to make Earl Grey

Getting the bergamot was the first hurdle. In 2015 our R&D team received its first consignment of bergamot extract after two months of struggle with customs clearance. Shruti then crafted an Earl Grey of every kind, black, white, green and oolong, “after sampling 80-odd versions of all,” including a smoky Earl Grey made with a high-fired tea. By mid-2016 we offered ten Earl Grey variants.

Real bergamot is precious. It takes about 200 kilograms of the fruit to make one kilo of true bergamot essence, and the best comes from Calabria and Sicily in southern Italy. That is why, as our 2016 guide put it, Earl Grey is not a tea but a style of drink: “Farmers don’t grow Earl Grey.”

Lemon itself adds a tangy lift to black and green teas; drink lemon tea without milk, as the acid curdles it.

Dried fruit such as peach, strawberry, mango or pineapple makes blends that are lovely iced. Our summer blends have leaned on Indian fruit: Mint Jamun paired the juicy sweetness and tartness of jamun (black plum) with mint and pineapple, and later summer tisanes used real freeze-dried kokum, jamun and grape.

Mint Jamun Black arrived in April 2019 with two other fruity black teas, Chilli Berry and Mango Strawberry, followed in May by Blackberry Black and Orange Pineapple Black. By 2022 the summer range had become caffeine-free tisanes made with real fruit: Kokum Hibiscus, Mint Jamun and Vanilla Grape, inspired by India’s old summer sharbats.

Our first iced teas, in 2015, were inspired by Indian summer drinks too, including one modeled on aam panna, the raw mango cooler. The surprise of that pack was a coffee-flavored iced tea. For how we built them, see Blending for iced tea.

Black tea also takes to dessert flavors: chocolate, nuts and dried fruit. Each winter our tea masters have made “liquor-flavored” teas with natural flavorings: Rum & Raisin, “sweet, dense, and heady,” and a spiced Mulled Wine tea. We suggested drinking them hot or cold, straight up, or as part of a winter cocktail.

The one still on sale is Champer’s Holiday: Darjeeling silver needle white tea with natural wine and apple flavors, all flavor and no alcohol. Our tasting notes describe fragrant white flowers, the “suppleness of a young champagne” and a hint of stewed apple, in a white-gold cup. The dry leaf is long, unopened silvery-green buds with downy hair. Our tasters pair it with cheese, olives, barbecued fruit, cherries or strawberries.

It was first made for Christmas 2017, and it is the only one of that year’s holiday blends we still make.

Chocolate and nuts have their own place in our holiday history. Our 2016 Diwali blends included Chocolate Marmalade and Vanilla Pistachio Tuile, “a flavored blend laden with the nuts,” and our 2016 Christmas collection had a Nutcracker.