Sugar is the Pandora’s box of tea. So tempting, yet so volatile. In the history of consumption, the rise of the sugar and tea trades happened at similar times, and had a symbiotic relationship. Sugarcane from the West Indies was harvested at the same time Indian and Chinese tea plantations harvested their crops. Let’s face it, tea is good with sugar. Yet sugar, whether in the form of honey, sugar crystals, or Agave nectar, has the potential to hide the most exquisite elements of the tea’s flavor when all you can taste is the syrupy sweetness. However, with the right amount, it can also enrich the body of the tea.
A tea is comprised of three main components: aroma, texture, and taste. Let’s take Jasmine Green Tea. When you first smell it, it smells like jasmine flowers of course, but there’s also a deeper, woodsy smell lying underneath. Then you taste it. The texture is smooth yet sharp with the pungency of the jasmine flower. The taste is sweetly floral, along with elements of cut grass and lemon.
Conduct an experiment, and try to describe the aroma, texture, and taste of the same type of tea with and without sugar. See for yourself what tastes the purest to you. I’ll leave you with an excerpt written by the staunch anti-sugar man, George Orwell. The following is from his essay “ ,” from the Evening Standard published in 1946.
“Lastly, tea—unless one is drinking it in the Russian style—should be drunk without sugar. I know very well that I am in a minority here. But still, how can you call yourself a true tea-lover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in pepper or salt. Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.”