ABSTRACT
Aroma is one of the critical aspects of tea quality which can determine acceptance or rejection of a tea before it is tasted. Early research on tea aroma can be traced back 160 years (Mulder, 1838), but progress on a more scientific basis has been achieved by the development and application of modern analytical techniques since the 1960’s, when gas chromatography was widely used, especially when capillary column techniques became available. Tremendous advances in gas chromatography and combined gas chromatography-mass spectrometry have greatly increased our knowledge of tea aroma. An assessment of all data known shows that more than 630 compounds have been reported in tea aroma. One of the primary goals in aroma research is to identify those constituents which are responsible for the characteristic aroma of tea. Many attempts have been made to look for the key compounds for the aroma of tea (Takei et al. 1976; Yamaguchi and Shibamoto, 1981; Yamanishi, 1978a), but no single compound or group of compounds has been identified as responsible for the full tea aroma. It is generally believed that the characteristics of various kinds of tea consist of a balance of very complicated mixtures of aroma compounds in the tea. In Table 5.1, these compounds have been arranged into chemical categories to
Table 5.1 Aroma Constituents of Tea (Yamanishi 1995).
