Jasmine Tea: Legends and more
One day during a cold winter, a Beijing tea businessman named Chen Guqiu invited a tea master to his house to chat over some tea. When they were talking about the different taste preferences of tea between the northern and southern people, Chen suddenly thought about a bag of tea that had been given to him as a gift by a southern young woman. He found the bag of tea and began to enjoy the unknown blend with the tea master.
At the time, the covered bowl was commonly used to make tea. When the two men took the lid off of the covered bowl after the first infusion, they were both overcome by a strong and exotic perfume. Then, within the tea steam, a charming young woman appeared, holding a bunch of jasmine. After a while, the woman vanished into a ball of steam.
Chen was surprised, even confused, but the tea master snickered. It seemed that the master knew everything. Realizing this, Chen asked for the master’s direction. The master exclaimed, “Dear brother, you might have done some benefactions.”
According to the master, the tea they were drinking was deemed superb by all who drank it and was usually referred to as “grateful celestial.”
This reminded Chen of some- thing that had happened three years prior when he was purchasing tea in the South. He happened to meet a young woman in the hotel. Her father had just died and, even worse, she had run out of money and wasn’t able to bury her father. After Chen learned of her sad situation, he took some money from his own pocket to help the woman. Later, he called the woman’s neighbors together in hopes of finding her relatives so she wouldn’t be alone.
Three years later, when he returned to the same hotel, Chen was presented with a bag of a special tea from the hotel manager along with a note saying that the young woman whom Chen had helped had left it for him as a thank you. Chen was curious about the extremely aromatic tea and wanted to contact the woman to learn more about it, but the hotel manager told Chen that the woman had died a year before. With this news, Chen figured he wouldn’t be able to learn any more about the tea.
Now, here he was sitting with the tea master sipping on that same tea. The two men made another bowl — smelled it, watched it and slurped it slowly. Lost in deep thought, Chen said, “In my opinion, tea celestial might be indicating that jasmine can be in tea.”
But it neglects to really explain how Jasmine tea gets the jasmine taste and scent, so I thought I would add to it a bit. One interesting fact about tea leaves is that they absorb scent from neighboring plants or bushes. This means that the exact tea bush grown in different gardens will taste different when steeped; each garden has unique characteristics that are absorbed into that tea bush.
Scenting tea with Jasmine is largely a practice that started in China (as you can read above). It requires quite a bit of work and a master craftsman to perfectly scent the tea. As The Tea Companion (pg 66) explains:
The beautifully sweet-smelling jasmine flowers are picked in the morning when they are fresh and they are kept cool during the day so that they do not open too soon. As the flowers start to open in the evening, they are piled next to the raw green, oolong, or black tea in very precise proportions. It takes about four hours for the tea to absorb the jasmine scent. For ordinary grades, the tea is spread out and then repiled for a second and third scenting. For superior grades, the spreading and piling is carried out up to seven times over a month or so. The leaves are then refired to remove any moisture in the blossoms or the tea and the blossoms are either removed or they are mixed in to give the tea an attractive appearance.
Our Jasmine Dragon Phoenix Pearls green tea is scented like this 8 - 10 times and it creates a wonderful fragrance and delicious taste when the tea is steeped. We also offer a Jasmine Oolong tea that is delicious as well. Jasmine is one of the most traditional scents used in tea - and still one of the best.