artificial flavor & tea

While intrepidly exploring rec.food.drink.tea, Ripon rolled initiative and posted the following:

"Yech." "Blah." "Nasty." "Gross."

That pretty much covers it. All of the fruited blends I have are natural, and have natural fruit pieces in them. Artificial flavors are just unthinkable in my morning cup.

An abomination!

Agalena

Hi Ripon,

I just found this posting. Yes, flavouring is quite common nowadays. But here in Germany (and I only can talk about Germany here), artificial flavouring for tea is not allowed. That doesn't mean, there is no flavouring allowed at all. So called natural ident (naturidentische) and also natural flavourings (natürliche Aromen) are allowed. But don't you think, natural flavouring of xy IS xy! It just means, that there is a substance in nature, which tastes like xy (e.g. natural strawberry flavouring is made from wood and in fact, it is some cheap trash of the paper industry). So, if you read on an Earl Grey package just "flavour" (Aroma) / "flavourings" (Aromen) or even "natural bergamotte flavouring" (natürliches Bergamotte Aroma), it is in fact some cheap trash. If it is the real stuff it has to be declared as natural bergamotte oil (natürliches Bergamotte-Öl) or for other flavourings (e.g. fruits) the stuff itself must be declared precisely by it's name (e.g. strawberries than strawberry flavouring

-- in fact, in most cases with strawberries, you've got both). So, those flavoured teas are a bit of a problem for peaople who tend to react allergic, because they don't know exactly, what's in those teas.

In my personal opinion, you also can taste the difference between e.g. natural bergamotte oil and flavourings. If you ever drunk an Earl Grey with real oil, you never will drink Twinings again!

For e.g. vanilla (e.g. in some East Frisian Blends), the real stuff without flavourings is not so intense (no Vanilin) in the taste (so, you realy have to adjust to a real pure natural taste, have to learn tasting), but it's very much more delicate!

So far ...

Dieter

If I'm not mistaken, Ripon was talking about secretly scenting oolongs with fruit flavors to make the teas seem to be fruitier. A way to "cheat." If this is indeed true, it is a crime in my book.

how does one determine if tea has flavoring added? ie. orchid oolong(imperial tea court) rose green pearl (tentea)

I posted here months ago enquiring on this very subject, specifically asking if Lapsang Souchong is still smoked on pine needles, these days, or if they just use artificial scents.

So you can confirm that it's the latter case? Are there tea growers still treating LS the traditional way?