cented tea, also known as fragrant slices, is mainly made of green tea as a tea base, with flowers that can exude fragrance as raw materials, and made by a tea winnowing and sorting machine. Scented tea production has a long history of at least 700 years.
Chinese scented tea is mainly produced in Guangxi, Fujian, Yunnan, Sichuan and Chongqing. In 2018, the output of jasmine in China was 110,800 tons. As a unique type of reprocessed tea in China, scented tea has been exported to Japan, the United States, Russia, Germany and other countries for many years, and enjoys a good reputation in the local market.
The chemical composition and health functions of scented tea have been extensively researched over the past 20 years in an attempt to uncover the scientific principles behind the health benefits of scented tea. The scientific community and mass media have gradually begun to pay attention to the beneficial properties of scented tea, such as drinking scented tea is associated with antioxidant, anticancer, hypoglycemic, hypolipidemic, immunomodulatory and neuromodulatory effects.
Scented tea is a unique type of reprocessed tea in China. At present, scented tea mainly includes jasmine tea, pearl orchid tea, sweet-scented osmanthus tea, rose tea and honeysuckle tea, etc.
Among them, jasmine tea is mainly concentrated in Hengxian County in Guangxi, Fuzhou in Fujian, Qianwei in Sichuan and Yuanjiang in Yunnan. Pearl orchid tea is mainly concentrated in Huangshan, Anhui, Yangzhou, Jiangsu and other places. Osmanthus tea is mainly concentrated in Guangxi Guilin, Hubei Xianning, Sichuan Chengdu, Chongqing and other places. Rose tea is mainly concentrated in Guangdong and Fujian and other places. Honeysuckle tea is mainly concentrated in Hunan Longhui and Sichuan Guangyuan.
In ancient times, there was a saying that “drinking tea is the best, and drinking flowers is the best”, which shows that scented tea enjoys a high reputation in Chinese history. Scented tea contains more comprehensive active ingredients than green tea because the selected flowers are rich in glycosides, flavonoids, lactones, coumarins, quercetin, steroids, terpenes and other active compounds. At the same time, scented tea is deeply loved by consumers because of its fresh and strong aroma. However, compared with green tea, the research on the health function of scented tea is very limited, which is an urgent research direction, especially the use of in vitro and in vivo models to evaluate the similarities and differences of the health functions of different representative scented teas and green tea, which will contribute to the high value of scented tea. utilization and development. Research on the health function of scented tea in other directions is also of great significance, which will help expand the application scope of scented tea. In addition, the development of scented tea based on health function orientation has positive significance, such as the application of resources such as butterfly bean flower, loquat flower, gorse line leaf, Eucommia eucommia male flower, and camellia flower in the development of scented tea.