Straight Tea

I personally enjoy both, but I tend to consider them totally different drinks. Pure tea I will brew up in a gaiwan and savor each sip, while flavored tea is something I usually brew up in a thermos on my way out the door in the morning.

I am also much more willing to pay a higher price for pure tea than flavored tea. I guess I kind of see it similar to fast-food vs a nice dine-in place.

When I first got into drinking tea, especially right after I kicked my Coke habit (12pk or more a day)I was trying a lot of the flavored teas. The more I am getting into teas, the more I find myself buying non flavored tea. Except jasmine tea, I love my jasmines. Although they can vary greatly and I have accidentally gotten some that tasted and smelled really strong on the jasmine and was on a low quality leaf. I think these were fake flavored cause on the second steeping there was very little detectable jasmine. Flavored teas usually use a lower quality leaf.

Another reason that I think I am finding myself gravitating to the pure teas is because I don’t know what chemicals they are using in the flavoring and the older I get the fussier I am about putting foods and drinks from unknown origins in my body. “Natural flavors” can cover a whole wide range of natural ingredients that might or might not be good to ingest.

Honestly, it really depends on my mood and the quality of the tea. I’ll take a plain ol’ builder’s in a pinch, but for the most part, if I’m going to drink a plain tea, it’s got to have something going for it. I want to be able to taste terroir, you know?

But beyond that, I’m a flavour scientist. Tea’s a good carrier for a lot of flavours (some better than others) and I like to play with that.

I prefer to drink unflavored teas, too. I will try a flavored or blended once in a while, but I never buy it to brew at home – I really drink a lot of Chinese greens with no sweetener or milk.

I enjoy flavored teas but there are good and bad. I wont drink a tea just because it is flavored. Some flavored teas seem to only be carriers for other flavors.
But the really good ones use a flavor that harmonizes with the actual tea flavors themselves in a kind of tastebud dance.

I enjoy both but would classify the flavored into two different categories: the natural ones (with only flower blossoms or natural herbs and fruit added) and the ones with artificial flavorings. Most of the tea I enjoy is either straight tea or the naturally flavored tea with no milk or sugar added.(like Jasmine green, Earl Grey). I’ve tried a few of the ones with artificial flavors and even though they smell delicious, they usually never taste as good as they smell. These teas and dessert teas are sometimes good as the occasional tea. I admit, I’ve been on a real tea tasting month and so my consumption of flavored teas has gone beyond what I usually have. Is is fun trying them out though! Without the flavored teas it would get a bit boring.

With the notable exception of good chai and Earl Grey, I am very much a non-flavored tea person. I love really great Earls. Possibly because we always had a box of Twinings EG while I was growing up. Having said that, I recently discovered Simpson & Vail Kashmir Rose which just knocked my socks off. I ordered a bunch of it after sampling.

I strongly dislike fruity teas.

the only flavoured teas I drink is earl grey.

99% of the time, I’m with you. Flavorings can be overwhelming, chemical, and generally mask underwhelming tea (or worse, mask great tea). One exception: Verdant’s blends. They work hard to compliment the notes in the tea itself, and their Laoshan Black Chocolate Genmaicha is a work of art.

There’s some teas that I see on here and I find myself thinking that’s not proper tea at all. Give me a good quality Ceylon or Assam any day as opposed to some of the truly horrendous sounding teas that some of these companies are producing.

Some flavoured teas are OK, I have a Rose Congou at home and a really nice Japanese Cherry Sencha and these are truly beautiful. So I’m not opposed to flavoured teas but I will always maintain why ruin a perfectly good product to start with. Do we mess about with coffee in the same way? I can only comment for the UK market but there isn’t a mass amount of syrups or flavoured coffee sachets out there.

Maybe I’m just showing my age.