What are Natural Flavors in Tea

While enjoying custom tea blends you may notice unusual yet heavenly flavors hugging your tongue. All tea enthusiasts like ourselves choose to drink tea not only because it tastes good hot or cold but also because of health reasons. This makes almost all tea aficionados to ask the question - what does “natural flavors” mean in tea? 

Although 80% of our current products don’t contain any flavors we wanted to provide a simple guide that will help you understand the art of tea flavoring and gave some answers to a simple question - what are the differences between artificial, natural, and organic flavors? 

Natural Flavors

Natural flavors are divided into two categories; natural flavors and organic compliant natural flavors. 

When the tea product package or product description mentions natural flavors it means that it includes essential oils derived from natural sources. Although the flavors are derived from natural resources they are still banned from being used in organic products. 

The ingredients may be sourced from essential oils, essences or extracts of plants, and/or fruits, however, if the ingredients are not organic certified it cannot be labelled as organic. 

Artificial Flavors

Although artificial flavors can be as safe for drinking as natural flavors they are labeled as artificial because they are not derived from natural resources and are manmade. That means that the essential oils may contain chemicals. 

Although most artificial flavors contain essential oils extracted from natural sources they may also contain other substances such as sugar, corn syrup, and citric acid. If the flavoring contains even small amounts of manmade ingredients are labelled as an artificial flavoring. 

Even if there is a manufactured equivalent of natural flavors, which means they contain the same molecules, they are still considered artificial in USA and Canada as they are manufactured not harvested. However, in Europe, they are considered natural due to the difference in regulations. 

Organic Compliant Natural Flavors

Organic compliant natural flavors contain ingredients that are extracted from natural resources and comply with organic regulations. 

Although organic tea products are available they may cost 2-3 times more than non-organic versions of the same product depending on the product type. Also, the flavor profile is quite limited because of the lack of availability of organic essential oils. 

Why Some Tea Companies Use Artificial Flavors? 

In reality, it is extremely difficult to have a big variety of products and use only natural flavors. Some tea companies use artificial flavors because of the new tea types they come up with. Another reason the high costs of natural flavors. It is difficult to keep the consistency of the product as the natural flavors can be limited or have high volatile costs mostly going up. 

Tea Types That Don’t Contain Flavors 

Except for our popular heavenly Organic Cream Earl Grey, which contains organic complaints, the remaining of our current tea products does not contain and flavorings. Here are some examples. 

🍃 Hojicha Roasted Green Tea
🍃 Japanese Sencha
🍃 Premium Izu Matcha
🍃 Milk Oolong
🍃 Tin Kuan Yin Oolong