How do you know your cup of tea is high quality?

Quality of tea

Tea is one of the most widely consumed drink in the world after water. It first originated in East Asia, China and spread across the world by trading between merchants. Tea became widely consumed in Britain in the 18th century and continues to be one of our favourite drinks to this very day.So what does one look for to determine if their tea is high quality?

The appearance and colour, aroma/fragrance and of course the taste. The appearance of tea leaves can take the form of whole leaves or broken leaves. Broken leaves is a sign that it has been machine harvested. Some teas are purposefully cut in order to provide a stronger tasting tea such as ‘Black tea’. A good tea has sweet aftertaste that is fresh. The fragrance of a tea is affected by the origin, the season, the picking and processing method. Each type of tea has a unique fragrance. Generally a tea that has a long lasting fresh fragrance is good quality.  It is known that there have been cases where low quality tea leaves have been tampered with and fragrances and additives added to mask the poor quality of these leaves.

Our FlavourSpec system can be used to distinguish the differences in aroma between high quality and low quality teas. the characteristics compounds that give tea its distinctive taste can be rapidly measured.