Tea rose (tea)
A tea rose or tea flower , tea flower or tea peony , is a small decorative bunch of select (young) Teezweigen, particularly on special occasions for tea production is used.
Tea roses are tied together with cotton thread in small packages, bunches, balls, hearts or chrysanthemum-like shapes - a process that takes one to ten or even fifteen minutes per tea rose, depending on the complexity of the design. The bundles are then dried at over 200 ° C for two hours. While most of the tea roses sold in major online teahouses are handmade, there are also machine-made ones. In the middle there are often dried flowers that appear when the bundle slowly unfolds as the tea is brewed. They are mainly used as gifts or as special attention for guests at festive events. Tea flowers are best placed in glass teapots, where they can develop their aroma and their shape and color can also come into their own. Depending on the taste, the tea blossoms can be infused several times and for the last infusion you can cut the thread to gain the last remnant of aroma. With the first infusion, the tea rose does not yet give off the full aroma, so the second or another infusion often results in the best tea.
The history of the tea rose is unclear - there are sources claiming that it was a new invention of the last ten to twenty years, others say that certain forms of the tea rose have existed for at least a hundred years. For example, in Chinese literature from the Song Dynasty (960–1279), it should be mentioned that tea leaves were tied together in the shape of flowers for the entertainment of the emperor . Such show teas were often very bitter and were not drunk, but were only intended as a visual pleasure. The idea of offering tea roses for preparing a drink as a gift set in combination with glass teapots is definitely a new sales strategy that has only been developed in the last few decades. Like other teas, tea roses vary greatly in the quality of the tea - some tea roses are still only made for entertainment and therefore only make a tasteless or very bitter drink.
In tea shops in Europe there are numerous tea roses made from different types of tea with a wide variety of flavors, from green tea to black tea or white tea . They are used much like a large tea bag . However, such tea specialties are far more expensive compared to the popular tea bags or loose tea.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Teeboom / Olga Kleim: [ http://tee-bluete.de/teegenuss/zubereitung.html The correct preparation of tea blossoms / tea flowers] ( German ) Retrieved on July 5, 2014.
- ↑ a b c d FlowerFairy / Chinese tea company: History and Origins of Blooming Tea ( English ) Retrieved July 5, 2014.
- ↑ a b Hsiao-Ching Chou: On Food: Stop and savor the flowering teas ( English ) In: Seattle Post-Intelligencer . Retrieved July 5, 2014.