Flavoured teas an infusions have flavour oil added during manufacture. The flavour oils are usually added last to either a single tea or a blend. Flavour oils can be used with Camelia sinensis (tea leaves) or with herbal or fruit infusions such as apple, hibiscus or raspberry leaf.
Use of flavourings enables tea blenders to make their blends taste of just about anything. Some blends require only one flavour oil while other can be made using complex blends of flavour oils themselves.
One thing to bare in mind is that there is a large variety of flavour oils even within a particular type. For example there are many different types of bergamot oil each with a different flavour profile and cost. One blender's Earl Grey could be very different from the next without any discernible quality difference.
Flavour oils enable tea blenders to use a small number of ingredients to make a wide variety of products. Usually flavoured teas and infusions are made using either black tea, Chinese sencha green tea, apple pieces, raspberry leaves or a mixture of these as a base.
It should be noted that most flowers and petals added to flavoured tea blends are purely decorative and do not add much, if anything, to the overall flavour. An example of this is Earl Grey Blue Flower, where the cornflower petals have no taste in infused. Dried fruit and spices can add both visual and flavour to blends.
There are 4 main types of flavour oils that can be used in making flavoured teas. Depending on which type of flavour oil used, there are different legal labelling requirements. The requirements are slightly different in the EU from those in USA. The main thing to bare in mind is not to state that a flavouring is natural if it is not. We can help make sure your labelling meets these requirements.
