Tea blending and additives
Tea blending is the act of blending different teas to produce a final product that differs in flavor from the original tea used. This occurs chiefly with black tea, which is blended to make most tea bags, but it can also occur with such teas as Pu-erh, where leaves are blended from different regions before being compressed. The most prominent type of tea blending is commercial tea blending, which is used to ensure consistency of a batch on a mass scale so that any variations between different batches and seasons of tea production do not affect the final product. Commercially, it is considered important that any batch of a particular blend must taste the same as the previous batch, so a consumer will not be able to detect a difference in flavor from one purchase to the next. Another common practice is to scent tea leaves or blend tea leaves with herbs, fruits or spices, either for health purposes or to add interesting and more complex aromas and flavor notes. These kinds of teas are usually termed "scented tea" or "flavored teas". Another method of flavoring tea leaves is to smoke them in various ways, such as the pinewood smoking used for lapsang souchong. Because tea takes on aromas with ease, there can be problems in the processing, transportation or storage of tea, but this property can also be consciously used to prepare flavored teas. Commercial flavored tea is often flavored in large blending drums with perfumes, flavorings, or essential oils. Although blending and scenting teas can add an additional dimension to tea, the process may also sometimes be used to cover and obscure the quality of sub-standard teas.
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