Indole is one of the stinkiest chemicals around. It is so stinky, in fact, that it has been used in at least one experiment comparing the effects of a pleasant versus an unpleasant odor on brain function.*…Yet you find it in so many perfumes…and in oolong tea!
I’m sniffing some now…how to describe the smell…well, to put it simply, it is present in high amounts in human feces…you get the idea…yet, at the same time its camphor-y warm aspect is fascinating, and makes me want to keep sniffing. Maybe this is really what perfumers mean when they say indole contributes to “narcotic” aromas.
Stinky it may be, but the fragrance of white flowers—jasmine, for example—is more powerful and rich because of indole's presence. And perfumes from these flowers get their staying power, in part, from the base note it provides—its longevity on the skin is estimated at 400 hours!
Jasmine flowers, from Morguefile.com
As I may have mentioned before (and if not, I’m saying it now), oolongs share many volatiles with jasmine flowers, including indole. In fact, as you process tea leaves, the levels of indole increase then decrease as oxidation progresses, which is why levels are highest in oolongs that have intermediate levels of oxidation.
We’ll have a variant of indole (not so stinky!) for you to smell at World Tea Expo, so you can get the idea of how it contributes to the depth of tea flavor.
* M. Bensafi*, C. Rouby, V. Farget, M. Vigouroux, A. Holley. Asymmetry of pleasant vs. unpleasant odor processing during affective judgment in humans. Neuroscience Letters 328 (2002) 309–313.
No comments:
Post a Comment