Plants are at the heart of what we do. That is why tasting our products carefully and selecting good suppliers are essential to us. We sell some plants on their own, but we also develop our own blends.
To create these recipes, we can choose from flowers, spices, citrus peel and dried fruit. We also use natural flavourings and essential oils to bring out the ingredients' character. All our products are organically grown.
Ingredients in our recipes
Tea
White, green or black, all tea comes from the same plant: Camellia sinensis. It offers an extraordinary range of flavours and also takes on other aromas particularly well, making it ideal for blending.
Aromatic herbs
Used for centuries in cooking and traditional herbal preparations, mint, lemon balm, verbena, thyme, rosemary and fennel bring lovely aromas to our infusions. We are especially fond of them because many can be grown in France.
Flowers
Rose, orange blossom, immortelle, lavender and hibiscus add delicate floral notes to our blends. Cornflower and calendula petals also make them beautiful to look at. Our Sunshine Flowers green tea is a good example of this colourful palette.
Spices
Cinnamon, ginger, pepper, cloves, cardamom, liquorice and, of course, vanilla: these intensely aromatic ingredients are widely used in cooking and in our Chabiothé blends. You will find them particularly in our Chai black tea, Ayurvedic herbal infusion and Christmas tea.
Citrus fruits
At once sweet and tangy, citrus peels are naturally rich in fragrant oils. Lemon, orange and bergamot are familiar ingredients in Earl Grey, and also feature in our Citrus Freshness blend and Citrus green tea.
Dried fruit
Pineapple, dates and mango gently round out a blend with their sweetness. Forest fruits, by contrast, bring a pleasantly tart note to green tea or rooibos.
Essential oils and flavourings
Used with care, flavourings can bring out the finer qualities of a tea. When we want to emphasise a particular note, we use natural flavourings and organic essential oils. Several of our blends include them.
Regulations on flavourings
The European Commission defines flavourings as products or substances added to food to impart or modify odour or taste, and which are not intended to be consumed on their own.
This definition includes several kinds of substances:
- Flavourings: These can be made from natural or synthetic flavouring substances. Take vanillin, the principal aromatic compound of vanilla. When it is reproduced entirely in a laboratory, it is simply described as a flavouring, sometimes with the word 'synthetic'.
- Natural flavourings : These are made from naturally derived flavouring substances. For example, in 1874 two chemists succeeded in isolating vanillin from spruce resin, a cheaper and more common source than vanilla pods. It could therefore be called a natural flavouring even though it did not come from vanilla. Natural flavourings can also be blended to recreate complex flavours, from biscuits to candyfloss.
- Natural 'X' flavourings: When vanillin is extracted directly from vanilla pods, it can be described as natural vanilla flavouring. Under the relevant EU rules, at least 95% of the flavouring component must come from the named source; the remaining 5% may come from other natural ingredients.
Essential oils obtained by distillation can also fall within these categories.
Before 31 December 2021, natural flavourings were allowed more broadly in the organic food industry. With the harmonisation of European rules under Regulation (EU) 2018/848, the rules were tightened: organic foods may use natural flavouring substances and certain natural 'X' flavouring preparations, subject to the applicable conditions. These measures aim to harmonise the rules and strengthen confidence in organic labelling.
For more information about the applicable regulations: European Union rules on organic production and labelling
At Chabiothé, we adapted some recipes to comply with the updated requirements. Natural tonka flavouring and lime essential oil joined our ingredient range, while our tropical-fruit and forest-fruit flavourings were revised. Our other essential oils remained unchanged.
The rules also make it easier to understand a product's composition, with clearer and more transparent labelling.