Black Tea
Dry, tannic brewed tea with woody bitterness, faint smokiness, and a warm leafy sweetness.
You may know it from a cup of strong black tea
Where it comes from
Made from oxidized Camellia sinensis leaves, as extracts or laboratory-made scent materials.
Worth knowing
It may smell dry and leathery rather than like a sweet tea drink.
About black tea
What sets black tea apart from green tea is how far the leaf is taken. Both come from Camellia sinensis, but for black tea the leaves are allowed to oxidise completely. In China the drink goes by hong cha. During that oxidation, flavan-3-ols in the leaf condense into theaflavins.
Processing includes a step that bruises or cuts the leaf, which releases the juices and enzymes that activate oxidation, and oxidation is where many of tea's taste and aroma compounds are formed. Assam, Darjeeling and Nilgiri are among the regions that make it. Chemists who studied a sun-dried black tea picked out beta-ionone, described as woody and violet-like, among its strongest odour-active compounds, and summed up the whole as a sweet floral and light green aroma.
Smoke is its own thread. Lapsang souchong is smoke-dried over a pinewood fire, and the two most abundant constituents of its aroma are longifolene and alpha-terpineol. In perfume, Bois de Jasmin says smoky tea accords are built from molecules such as pyrazines, and the same writer singles out a deliciously rendered darjeeling tea accord in Bulgari Pour Homme.
Perfumers place black tea accords in amber, leather and woody structures, where they add warmth and tannic dryness without sweetness. One perfumery glossary traces an accord that opens smoky, softens into a powdery, ionone-driven warmth, and ends on a faint woody-powdery trace. A supplier of black tea CO2 extract reports that on skin it lasts about 40 minutes.
Accords it shows up in
How many of the fragrances listing Black Tea in our catalogue also carry each accord. We counted this ourselves.
Often paired with
The notes that appear next to Black Tea most often in our catalogue.
Well-known fragrances with Black Tea
Fragrances that list it in their notes, most-rated first.
Houses that use it most
Ranked by how many of their well-known fragrances list Black Tea.