Ingredients · Flower

Jasmine

Jasminum sambac · Oleaceae (olive family)

Jasmine
The flower that a tea learns overnight. Jasmine opens at night, and the traditional scenting works with that: flowers picked around midday on a sunny day while still closed, kept cool, then at about nine in the evening layered with dry tea for twenty to twenty-four hours as they open. The blossoms are sifted out, the tea dried, and for the top grades the whole thing is repeated with fresh flowers six or seven times. Three products carry it. A naturally scented jasmine tea has the perfume woven through it; a loud, perfumey smell usually means flavouring.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partFlower
KindFlower
CaffeineCaffeine-free
Where it is fromChina
TasteSweet white-flower perfume over a soft green tea, a gentle astringency and a clean sweet finish
How to brew it
  • 175°F / 80°C
  • 2 to 3 minutes; pearls a little longer
  • never boiling water

How to use it

Brew at green-tea temperature, around 175°F — boiling water scorches both the leaf and the perfume. Dragon pearls, hand-rolled into small balls, unfurl slowly and take a longer steep. In southern China it is the welcome cup for guests and the tea of the dim-sum table.

With food

Dim sum and dumplings. Steamed fish. Rice. Lychee and melon. Almond cookies. Light cheese. Cucumber.

With spices

Green cardamom, as in Peshawari qehwa. Ginger. Lemon peel. Mint.

With tea

Green tea, which is its usual base. White tea. Rarely blended further — jasmine is the flavour.

Its story

Where it comes from

Jasminum sambac is native to Bhutan and India and is thought to have reached China from South Asia in the Han dynasty. Fuzhou in Fujian is the heart of jasmine tea — the City of Jasmine since the Song, with jasmine on the riverside flats and tea on terraces at 600 to 1,000 m above, a landscape designated a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System in 2014. Our lots name no origin.

What happened

The blossoms only give their scent for ten to twelve hours, which is why the work happens at night and why jasmine blooms from April to September while spring tea waits for summer flowers. Robert Fortune, travelling the valley of the Min at Fuzhou in 1852, found jasmine occupying a prominent place among the flowers, sold in the markets and eagerly bought by the ladies for ornamenting their hair. The flower also gave China one of its best-known songs: Mo Li Hua, Jasmine Flower, whose tune was written down on Lord Macartney's embassy to the Qianlong Emperor and printed by John Barrow in 1804 — and which Puccini later used as Princess Turandot's leitmotif. In Chinese culture the fragrance of jasmine is said to be of heaven.

On the shelf with it

Every product it goes into.

Every ingredient in the shop

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Other ways in

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