Black tea innovation: shake it for 5 minutes, and the tea will smell like nectar.

YuanJia131

Traditional black tea often has a sweet and mellow aroma, lacking the lively floral nectar notes.

The tea farmers introduced the "shaking" technique of oolong tea into black tea processing, resulting in a rich floral honey aroma. This is the new process black tea.

The researchers only added a 5-minute mechanical shaking process halfway through the traditional black tea withering (referring to natural withering indoors).

This tiny change, however, opened the door to the fragrance of nectar.

Researchers have discovered that shaking serves as a key that activates three crucial "molecular pathways": the primary floral fragrance pathway, responsible for lipid metabolism; the enhanced floral fragrance pathway, involved in shikimate metabolism; and the coordinated floral fragrance pathway, dedicated to mevalonate metabolism.

Researchers used gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to analyze the aroma compounds of two types of black tea and found that 28 compounds were significantly higher in rolling black tea compared to traditional black tea, while only 4 compounds had lower concentrations.

Among the 28 aromatic compounds, 11 can be distinctly detected (OAV > 10) and serve as the core contributors to the floral honey aroma. Examples include methyl jasmonate and jasmone, which impart jasmine and honey sweetness; indole, which delivers a rich floral fragrance; linalool, which provides orange blossom notes; and hexanal and octanal, which evoke grassy aromas.

What's even more interesting is that these aromatic molecules begin to gradually form only after the shaking process. In contrast, traditional black tea production may actually reduce these molecules by over 60%. This is the key reason why shaken black tea is more fragrant.