At Chiques Creek, we take a lot of time and care in perfecting our Hemp Tea flavours. While other tea companies all have the same tried-and-true regulars like peach, lemon and mint, we knew that we wanted to make our flavours more fresh and complex and try combinations that we hadn’t previously seen in the market. Our in-house Product Development team works closely with our ingredient suppliers to explore new and exciting trends in flavours and spend months toying with the combinations and the proportions to ensure the perfect balance and harmony.
With the launch of our newest Hemp Tea flavour combination: Apricot + Orange Blossom, we thought we’d share an inside look at how we develop and perfect our unique and one-of-a-kind flavours.
Our team starts by looking at the up-and-coming trends in beverage flavors and what other players in the category are already experimenting with. We’ve identified 5 “categories” of tea flavours in total: Orchard, Citrus, Berry, Tropical and Botanicals where we see more herbal type flavours found in more traditional tea bag products.
After we identify which flavours we feel fit well within our brand and existing product line, we get to move to the fun part: mixing in the lab. We typically choose one flavour to start with, say dandelion, and try mixing it with several different additional flavour combinations, like peach, blackberry, or ginger, to see what seems to pair best. We can go through several weeks of trial and error, taste testing and surveying, until we settle on the best dual combination, but the process doesn’t end there.
Once we’ve decided on our final flavour, our team goes back to make sure that the balance and proportion of each flavour is perfected. Dandelion naturally has more of a bitter taste, so ensuring that we were using enough of the sweet peach, and citrus lemon flavours to balance out the bitterness was key. However, we also didn’t want to lose that bitter note altogether so the science of finding that perfect balance really is an artistry.
“Creating and developing flavours is definitely a highlight for me and lets me use by creative side. It does take a lot of time and work, and I’ve definitely tasted my share of less than pleasant combinations, but the possibilities are truly endless and there are certainly more unique combinations to come for Chiques Creek.” – Wyleisha, Quality Assurance and Product Development
Our Apricot + Orange Blossom Hemp Tea will be hitting store shelves soon! Find it along with our other three flavours at retailer near you. Have any suggestions for our next flavour combinations? Let us know @chiquescreek on Facebook and Instagram and follow us to stay up-to-date on our newest additions!
