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FLAVOURING

Flavourings within teas are commonly misunderstood as a practise – more often becoming something we get asked about by suppliers globally.

The premise of STICKSOLOGY was based on bringing healthy teas to the market with full flavourings. How to enjoy flavour naturally, rather than opting for the ‘easier’ choice of sugary drinks. Here we will explain how flavouring is applied to our teas.

Scenting teas with natural oil extracts – such as earl grey or jasmine – has been a practice for over 100 years. A simple process of spraying the leaves with oil or scent of choice.

JASMINE: Jasmine tea is thought to have originated in China where blossom leaves dry out and are placed onto the tea leaves—oil slowly seeps into these leaves.

Our Jasmine blend is infused with jasmine flowers for 24 hours, creating an aromatic blend that can be enjoyed any time of the day.

The type of blend influences the flavouring. For example, Moroccan Mint will use spearmint nana mint or bergamot oil. In these cases, we use ‘natural’ flavourings or extracts.

Although not natural in the sense that it’s coming directly from the fruit itself, the ingredients are natural as they exist in nature, but assembled in a factory and often mixed with other ingredients.

More often than not, you get a better flavour in using mixed ‘natural’ ingredients than the actual natural one that is being represented!

EU food labelling rules:

‘Natural’ as a label cannot be used unless 95% or more of such ingredient used within a tea, is the ingredient it is named from.

You don’t see this very often within the tea industry because:

  1. It wouldn’t be cost-effective
  2. It wouldn’t be flavourful or last-longing.
This is rarely the case in the tea industry, as the flavouring or scent wouldn’t be as stable, long-lasting, flavourful or cost-effective. It also means flavouring houses are able to produce their scents even when the fruit/herb isn’t in season, or is perhaps hard to get hold of. Odd as it sounds, sometimes you can get a better flavour or scent by using other natural ingredients rather than the one you are trying to represent.

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