If you’re ready for something a little different at tea time, try a flavored oolong tea. Many Westerners have not experienced the delicious flavor of oolong tea in any form. With a different flavor than black, green or white teas, oolongs are a rare treat. When paired with another flavor, oolong teas are quite exceptional.

Oolong tea is very popular in Asia. It was first created in China and is still considered China’s national tea. In the West, however, it is one of the least familiar tea varieties.

Tea has been the world’s most popular beverage for centuries. And it didn’t take long for tea artisans to determine that the only way to make tea better was to add other delicious flavors to it. And, today, tea is available in every flavor imaginable. The most popular teas for flavoring are black teas and green teas, though flavored white and oolong teas are gaining popularity.

Fans of oolong tea are clamoring to get Imperial Formosa oolong tea. Because oolong teas in general are fairly rare, many people want to look to other sources to find their favorite oolong.

Oolong teas are produced in China, where oolong tea originated, Taiwan, and a small amount is produced in the Darjeeling region of India. Creating oolong tea is a labor intensive process that cannot be managed by large scale tea gardens that produce tea in a mechanized fashion. This is why oolong teas can be rare and harder to find than some other teas.

In America, just about 90 percent of folks drink their tea brewed by tea bag. It is the same routine, pour hot water into a cup and dunk the bag for a few minutes until the water turns a dark red color, add sugar and enjoy.

My question is, what are these folks enjoying?

A few years back, I too was the victim of tea bag tea. I, being an American, remained ignorant of the true way tea was meant to be enjoyed. Not only would I have tea just when I was sick, but along with the 90 percent of Americans I would brew it using fannings.

If you love flavored teas, you’ve certainly realized that there is an endless variety from which to choose. No matter what flavor you like, there’s a tea for you. If you’d like to try a wide variety of flavored teas, you may find it difficult to find all the flavors in your local tea shop. But, by shopping online, you have access to nearly all the flavored teas in the world at the touch of a button.

Experimenting is critical, particularly for the tea novice. It may take you some time before you understand which flavors you like paired with which tea varieties. But, oh, how much fun testing them all out can be!

The tradition of flavoring tea goes back many centuries. Nearly as long as tea has been made it has been flavored. However, it is said that the idea for flavoring tea came about as a bit of an accident. Many years ago tea gardeners in China planted other trees to provide shade and moisture for their tea plants.

They soon discovered that the tea trees that were planted near certain trees, such as peach, plum magnolia and apricot trees produced teas that had absorbed the aroma and flavor of the fruit and flower tree’s blossoms. You’ll note that some teas are considered flavored, while others are considered scented. Flavored teas actually taste of the addition used, while scented teas have merely absorbed the addition’s fragrance.

Flavored teas are produced all over the world. Because each tea growing region of the world produces tea with slightly different tastes, flavored teas can taste different depending upon the tea base used to create them, including where this tea base is grown.

Two of the world’s largest tea producing countries are Sri Lanka and India and thus, many flavored teas are created from the teas grown in these countries. Understanding the characteristics that distinguish the teas from Sri Lanka and India will give you an idea of how a flavored tea made from these tea bases will taste.

If you’re new to flavored teas, there’s a real treat in store for you. There’s a tea for every taste and with so many blends to choose, from you’ll likely have difficulty deciding on just one or two.

The best flavored teas are created from blending fine loose tea with natural flavors from fruits, spices, herbs and florals. Artificial flavors should never be used, or they will leave the tea with a fake taste that’s easy to recognize.