Flavouring
Flavoured Tea
Flavoured teas have been around for a long time already. The oldest known recipes or varieties are from China, where green and black teas were being mixed or enhanced with jasmine or rose blossoms or even smoked a long time ago.
Nowadays there are no boundaries as to what you could imagine in this respect. Especially the last 20 years have experienced a huge increase in the varieties available and hardly any desires are left unmet.
The modern "World of Tea" of today cannot do without the use of machines anymore, even though some blends of lower quantities are still produced manually. Modern blend and packaging machines simplify and improve the production process and guarantee a high as well as continuous quality level.
Flavours
The term „aroma“ comes from the Greek language and means: spice.
Aromas are the determinants of the taste of foodstuff. They give food a clearly distinguishable character and generally only the combination of several 100 flavours forms the typical taste and smell of a certain food. The entire concentration of aromas is in the ppb-area (parts per billion).
According to § 1 of the aroma regulation, aromas are concentrated preparations of flavours and further components of foodstuff which are technologically necessary.
We can distinguish between the following varieties of aromas:
- natural aromas
- nature-identical aromas
- artificial aromas
- aroma extracts
Natural Aromas
Natural aromas are yielded from natural, plant or animal raw materials, such as fruits, spices, herbs, roasted coffee or smoked ham. In their production, only physical, enzymatic or microbiological procedures can be used such as squeezing, distilling, warming, filtering, grinding, blending, fermenting or cutting.
Nature-identical Aromas
Nature-identical aromas are produced via chemical synthesis such as esterification or acetylation. The hereby used raw materials do not have to be of natural origin, but the chemical characteristic of the final product has to be identical to a naturally existing substance of plant or animal origin. Therefore, a large number of nature-identical aromas is available, which are equal in quality to the natural ones.
Nature-identical aromas are generally residue-free.
Artificial Aromas
Artificial aromas have the same characteristics as natural aromas, but they do not exist in nature. In Germany, their use in teas is forbidden by law.
Aroma Extracts
Aroma extracts are, like natural aromas, produced from natural, plant or animal raw materials via physical, enzymatic or microbiological procedures. However, aroma extracts are highly concentrated aroma blends which are much more intensive than the naturally existing raw materials.