How Jasmine Tea Is Made: Scenting, Jasmine Pearls and How to Brew It
Real jasmine tea is green tea that spends night after night with fresh jasmine blossoms. How it's made, how to tell scented from flavored, what jasmine pearls are and how to brew them.
Open a good tin of jasmine tea and the scent finds you before the lid is all the way off. What surprises most people is how few flowers end up inside. Traditional jasmine tea is a base tea, usually green, that has spent night after night packed close to fresh jasmine blossoms, soaking up their perfume before the spent flowers are taken away. It's a slow, old and wonderfully fussy craft, and once you know how it works you'll never read a jasmine tea label the same way again.
What is jasmine tea?
Jasmine tea is a scented tea. Leaves from the tea plant, Camellia sinensis, are perfumed with the flowers of Jasminum sambac, a jasmine prized for its sweet, heady fragrance. Green tea is the classic base, which is why "jasmine tea" and "jasmine green tea" usually mean the same cup. White tea, oolong and even black tea get the jasmine treatment too.
Scented teas have deep roots in China. When UNESCO added China's traditional tea processing techniques to its list of intangible cultural heritage in 2022, flower-scented teas were part of that tradition.
Where jasmine tea comes from
Ask where jasmine tea began and one city keeps coming up: Fuzhou, in Fujian province on China's southeast coast. Jasmine tea there is traced back to the Song dynasty, roughly a thousand years ago, and the scenting craft grew more refined during the Ming dynasty. Fuzhou became known as China's city of jasmine. (Not a bad nickname, as nicknames go.) The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations now recognizes Fuzhou's jasmine and tea growing system as a globally important piece of agricultural heritage.
Fuzhou isn't the only source today. Other regions of China, including Guangxi, grow jasmine and make scented tea as well.
How true jasmine tea is made
Real scenting is a night shift. Jasmine flowers give off most of their fragrance as they open, and they open in the evening. So the buds are picked during the day while they're still closed, then kept cool until they're ready to bloom. Buds that won't open that night, or flowers that already have, aren't much use.
- The base tea is made and dried first, so it's ready when the jasmine harvest comes in.
- In the evening, as the buds begin to open, they're mixed or layered with the dry tea and left in a pile overnight. Tea leaves are very good at absorbing aromas, and here that talent is the whole point.
- Workers turn and spread the pile through the night so it doesn't get too warm, then heap it back up.
- By morning the blossoms are spent. They're sifted out and the tea is gently dried.
- Then it all happens again with a fresh batch of flowers. Each round layers on more fragrance, and the top grades go through six or more rounds.
That's why a beautifully scented jasmine tea may show only a few stray petals, or none at all. The flowers did their job and clocked out. So don't judge a jasmine tea by how many blossoms you can see in the tin.
Scented vs flavored jasmine tea
Scenting with fresh flowers takes time, skilled labor and a mountain of blossoms. Not every jasmine tea is made that way. Some get their jasmine character from added jasmine flavoring or fragrance oil instead. Food scientists have even worked out lab tests to spot teas sold as scented that were really given synthetic jasmine oil, which tells you how seriously the tea world takes the difference.
Flavored jasmine tea isn't a crime. It's often less expensive and can be perfectly pleasant. It's simply a different thing, and you deserve to know which one you're buying.
How to read a jasmine tea label
- Phrases such as "scented with jasmine blossoms" or "scented with fresh jasmine flowers" point to the traditional method.
- Words like "natural flavor," "jasmine flavor" or "jasmine essence" in the ingredients usually mean flavoring did some or all of the work.
- A good label names the base tea, whether green, white or oolong, and ideally where it was grown.
- A short ingredient list of tea and jasmine is a good sign, though it won't tell you how many rounds of scenting the tea got. If you're curious, ask the maker. Good makers love that question.
What are jasmine pearls?
Jasmine pearls are scented green tea rolled by hand into small, tight balls. Drop them into hot water and they slowly unfurl back into leaves and buds, which is great fun to watch in a glass cup or pot like the Hario Chacha. They're dense, so a small spoonful goes further than you'd expect.
Culinary Teas' Jasmine Dragon Pearls are hand-rolled green tea pearls scented with spring jasmine. Art of Tea's Jasmine Pearls start as organic green tea leaves and buds that are scented with jasmine blossoms and then rolled by hand.
More jasmine teas to explore
If you'd rather start with loose leaves, TRULY TEAS' Truly Jasmine is an organic Mao Jian green tea from Wuyuan, China, scented with jasmine blossoms. Art of Tea's Jasmine Reserve is organic green tea that its maker scents again and again with night-blooming jasmine. For a rounder cup, Teappo's Jasmine Oolong pairs floral jasmine with a sweet, nutty oolong, and our guide to oolong explains why that base tastes so different from green tea.
Browse more in our green tea and oolong collections.
How to brew jasmine tea
Treat jasmine green tea the way you'd treat any delicate green tea. Water that's too hot is the quickest route to a bitter cup. Use about one teaspoon (2 to 3 grams) per 8 ounces of water at 170 to 180°F and steep for 2 to 3 minutes, tasting a little early. Pearls are compact, so use a bit less by volume than you would for loose, open leaves.
Most jasmine green teas give you two or three good infusions, so don't toss the leaves after the first cup. Jasmine oolong likes slightly hotter water, around 185 to 195°F. Our loose leaf brewing guide covers the basics, and jasmine green tea is lovely cold brewed, too. Follow the green tea times in our cold brew guide.
Quick answers
Is jasmine tea the same as jasmine green tea?
Usually. Green tea is the classic base, but jasmine white tea and jasmine oolong exist too, so check the label.
Does jasmine tea have caffeine?
Yes, when it's made with tea from the tea plant. The amount depends on the base tea and how you brew it. Our caffeine guide has the details.
How do you brew jasmine pearls?
Use water around 175°F, steep for 2 to 3 minutes and watch the pearls open. They'll usually give you a second and third cup.
How can you tell if jasmine tea is naturally scented?
Look for wording that says the tea was scented with jasmine blossoms, and check the ingredients for added flavor or essence.
Why are there so few flowers in my jasmine tea?
In traditionally scented tea, the spent blossoms are removed after each round of scenting. The fragrance stays in the leaves.
