A Cup of Tea Without Tea Leaves

A pot of green tea just poured, the steam carrying a smell of leaf, of flower and a trace of orange peel. The tea note in perfume almost never comes from tea leaves. It is rebuilt from linalool, bergamot, orange blossom and a trail of wood. This piece takes the smell of tea apart, then builds a green tea blend from essential oils alone.

The tea leaf and its smell

Every tea, green, white, oolong, black, comes from one plant: Camellia sinensis, family Theaceae, native to China and Southeast Asia. What sets them apart is how the leaves are handled after picking, and above all how far the leaves are allowed to oxidise.

Tea leaf extract does exist, but it is rare. The library's tea leaf page records it as a material with very limited production, used mainly in niche perfumery, with a characteristic black tea note. The odour constituents listed include linalool, phenylethanol and geraniol.

The larger problem is safety. Tea leaf extract sensitises skin at very low concentrations, 0.001 percent in guinea pig studies. IFRA limits it to 0.2 percent in body creams, oils and lotions, and the library advises against use on sensitive or damaged skin or for children under two.

Both facts lead to one conclusion. For a clear tea smell on skin, the tea leaf itself can only be a trace. The rest has to come from oils that carry the same molecules, or suggest the same impression.

Linalool: the floral part of tea

Linalool is present in more than 200 commercial oils. It smells floral, slightly woody, clean and light. In the smell of tea, linalool is the floral part a tea drinker notices when calling a pot fragrant.

Sources of linalool in an oil cabinet are wide. Ho leaf of the linalool chemotype holds 67 to 91 percent, rosewood 82 to 90 percent, coriander seed 59 to 88 percent. Neroli holds 31 to 54 percent; bergamot holds 4 to 20 percent linalool with 18 to 28 percent linalyl acetate.

In the tea blend below, coriander seed is the main source of linalool. Coriander seed does not smell like coriander leaf: floral and woody, slightly spicy, without any waxiness. It gives the tea a dry floral part, closer to the flower in green tea than to the flower in a bouquet.

Linalool needs one precaution. Pure, it is almost non-reactive on skin, but when it oxidises it forms hydroperoxides that sensitise. The library page recommends adding 0.1 percent BHT or tocopherol and keeping the bottle dark and sealed. Linalool is also one of the 26 EU allergens that must be labelled above 10 ppm in leave-on products.

Bergamot and Earl Grey

The bergamot fruit is greenish yellow with a thick peel, grown mainly in Calabria in southern Italy. The oil is cold pressed from the peel, without heat. According to the library's Calabria page, bergamot is the top note of cologne type perfumes and of the chypre family, and also the flavour of Earl Grey tea. Since 2001 the name of Reggio Calabria bergamot oil has been protected in the EU as a DOP, a protected designation of origin.

Earl Grey is the clearest example that the smell of tea is not only the smell of leaf. A black tea with bergamot added, and what stays in memory is the meeting of the leaf's astringency with the brightness of citrus peel. In perfume that pair can be rebuilt the other way round: bergamot as the axis, tea as a trace.

Cold-pressed bergamot contains furocoumarins, including bergapten, which is phototoxic. This blend uses FCF bergamot, from which bergapten has been removed by fractional distillation or adsorptive filtration. According to the library, FCF bergamot is not phototoxic and can be used up to 16.6 percent on skin under the SCCNFP bergapten threshold. It smells lighter than cold-pressed bergamot; part of its character leaves with the furocoumarins.

In the SFP classification, citrus and herbs stand together in the aromatic citrus branch, code A3. A green tea accord sits close to this branch: citrus above, flowers and herbs in the middle, light wood below.

Osmanthus and flower tea

Clusters of small yellow orange flowers, so strongly scented they can be noticed from a distance. This is osmanthus, Osmanthus fragrans, a flowering tree of East Asia. In China osmanthus flowers go into tea, wine, preserves and pastries; osmanthus tea is one of the most familiar uses.

Osmanthus smells complex: floral, ripe apricot, light leather, honey-sweet. Its main molecule is beta ionone, at roughly 8 to 34 percent, with dihydro beta ionone and gamma decalactone, the molecule behind its apricot and cream. It takes about 2,500 kg of fresh flowers for one kilogram of extract, and the benchmark source is Guilin in China.

In a tea accord, osmanthus pulls the smell towards flower tea: sweeter, fruity, with a hint of leather. It is the direction furthest from the green leaf. One drop of osmanthus in a green tea blend is enough to warm it noticeably; more, and the tea steps back behind the flower.

The green tea blend below does not use osmanthus, because the aim is to keep the leaf. But osmanthus is the first choice for moving the blend towards a cup of flower tea, and the library lists no IFRA limit for osmanthus, so adding it is not constrained by skin limits.

The Lê Mai green tea blend

Sixty drops in a 30 ml bottle, 10 percent in perfumer's alcohol. This strength is lighter than the other blends in the series, close to eau de toilette, because a tea smell needs to be clear and airy. The 30 ml bottle is chosen for the same reason as in the leather piece: one drop of tea in a 10 ml bottle is already 0.5 percent, over the limit.

FCF bergamot takes a third of the blend and brightens the top. Coriander seed and neroli both carry linalool, giving the dry floral part of green tea. Lemon leaf, distilled from the leaves and young twigs of the lemon tree and rich in citral, gives a sharp green leaf note. Cedarwood takes almost a quarter, as a light woody base. One drop of green tea lays astringency over the whole structure.

On a blotter, bergamot and lemon leaf open first, bright and green. After about half an hour the linalool of coriander seed and neroli comes up, and the blend smells closest to a freshly brewed pot of tea: flower, leaf, a little citrus. After a few hours, cedarwood remains with a trail of white flowers.

The ratio of bergamot to coriander seed is the part most worth adjusting. More bergamot, and the tea leans towards Earl Grey, bright and full of peel. More coriander seed, and the tea turns drier, closer to the floral woody part of the leaf. Lemon leaf and the tea drop stay as they are, since both are already close to their limits. Any other change should go one drop at a time, tested again on a blotter each time.

Lê Mai keeps several tea oils in its cabinet: green tea, white tea, black tea. Each can take the place of the tea drop in this blend, with the same one-drop ceiling for a 30 ml bottle.

The two limiting oils are tea and lemon leaf. Tea: an IFRA limit of 0.2 percent on skin; one drop in a 30 ml bottle gives about 0.17 percent. Lemon leaf: a 0.6 percent maximum because of citral and geraniol; three drops give about 0.5 percent. Do not raise either in a 30 ml bottle.

The bergamot is FCF, not phototoxic, with a 16.6 percent maximum; here it sits at about 3.3 percent. Neroli has no IFRA limit and sits at about 2 percent. Coriander seed sits at about 1.7 percent and cedarwood at about 2.3 percent, with no specific limits.

The blend is rich in linalool and limonene and needs a dark, sealed, cool bottle; tocopherol can be added as the library recommends. Linalool, citral, geraniol and limonene must be labelled as allergens under EU rules if the blend is sold as a product. Not for damaged skin or young children, following the tea leaf page. Try it on a small patch of skin before wider use.

From green tea to black tea

Green tea leaves are heated quickly right after picking, by steam or dry roasting, to halt oxidation and keep their green smell. Black tea leaves are withered and then left to oxidise completely, changing colour and smell. In perfume that difference becomes a change of proportions, without rewriting the whole formula.

To move the blend towards black tea, reduce lemon leaf and bergamot, add dry wood and a little resin. The green tea drop becomes a black tea drop. The result comes close to the piece on leather, where black tea gives astringency beside pơ mu and myrrh. The two pieces are linked by the same drop.

To move towards flower tea, add osmanthus as described, or raise the neroli. To move towards white tea, reduce the cedarwood and keep the blend lighter still. Each direction is a different cup from the same plant.

Green tea already has its own place in perfume history. Bvlgari's Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert of 1992 takes tea as its main note, according to the list on the library's tea leaf page. More than thirty years later, the tea note is still built mostly from things that are not tea leaves.

A cup of tea built from citrus peel, coriander seed and one drop of leaf.

The tea leaf stands last on the list. Its smell still comes first.