Before I wrote my review of Twinings’ Cold Infuse, I hesitated for a while. I started off reviewing the teas I owned – which were mostly flavoured teas – and have been slowing moving to straight teas as I learn to appreciate the nuances and differences between them. Right now, I think it’s about 50-50 in terms of the teas I drink but something about the Cold Infuse made me hesitate. Maybe it’s because the tisanes are too accessible – it’s literally for you to throw into your bottle and there’s no tea [1] – but the slightly tea snobbish part of me that was proud of myself for moving towards straight teas didn’t really want others to know that I drink these sorts of flavoured teas as well.

Well, I had to squash the tea snob in me because a part of me is always going to be fond of flavoured teas. It’s going to be a smaller part of my tea stash, but there will always be flavoured teas in my tea stash. So I thought I’d give three reasons in defence of them:

They are a great way to get people interested in tea

This is one of the biggest reasons why I like flavoured teas: it’s a lot easier to get people to drink flavoured teas rather than a straight tea. I started my tea journey with the free tea in my university cafeteria, but I only started getting interested in tea after trying teas from Mslena and Lupicia. For a long time, I just tried a bunch of different flavoured teas and my interest in straight teas only took off after I came back to Singapore.

Among my friends, most of us started drinking flavoured teas and progressed from there to straight teas. I only know of one person who did a deep dive into straight teas immediately, and he’s very much the exception (although he is also the one with the most tea knowledge so there might be something there).

They are easy to drink (and bake with)

As much as I enjoy brewing several rounds of tea and seeing how the tea changes with each steep, there are times where I just want a warm, comforting cup of tea. You’ll notice that whenever I talk about teas that I’ve been drinking (but not reviewing), they’re almost always teabags and mostly flavoured teas – that’s because it’s easy to make and it hits the spot.

And if you’re into baking, flavoured teas are great for that. I’ve made tea-infused scones, cakes, and pannacotta and in general, I find that flavoured teas tend to work the best. Plus, if you have a really great straight tea, it’s probably not the most cost-effective idea to turn it into a dessert; for example, my Kinnettles Gold will never be in a scone or any other dessert. I’m enjoying that one gongfu-style.

Not all tea needs to be straight tea

Not all teas are created equal. There are lots of things that could influence the quality of the tea – time of harvest, rolling technique, oxidation technique, etc. As such, there’s a range in the quality and prices of tea.

Which leads me to the question: should teas in the lower end of the quality spectrum be drunk straight?

I’d argue against it. Some of the teas will have certain flaws (prominent astringency, higher tannin levels, etc) and blending and/or flavouring them might actually help to mask the flaws. It’s a little bit like tea and food pairing – I was taught that you could sometimes use tea to mask the flaws of food and vice versa. So in the same principle, I’d say that there are teas that would actually benefit from being drunk as a flavoured and/or blended tea.

In conclusion, I have just written a post to convince myself that my enduring love for flavoured teas is normal. But seriously speaking, I don’t really understand the tea snobbery that I sometimes see. Are there teas that are technically better than others? Of course! Can the average person distinguish between them? Probably not. The tea journey consists of finding out what you like and where you can get more of it – the tea that someone likes may be sheng puer, the tea that someone else likes may be flavoured tea, and both choices are okay. There are definitely issues that we need to be aware of, like whether the tea was grown ethically or sustainably [2] but there is no good reason to judge each other’s choice of tea.

Notes

[1] Although now that I think about it, I have read something about the word 茶 (cha) coming from 荼 (tu) which didn’t actually specifically refer to tea. This may explain why in Chinese, basically any type of plant in hot water is a type of 茶 (cha). Note to self: look into this in the future.

[2] I’d love to do a deep dive into that sometime but Jill has some great posts on tea and the environment and the plight of tea workers in Nilgiris that I’d recommend if you’re looking for something to read now.