What gets picked
Reprocessed tea has no pluck of its own, because it is made from leaf that was already finished.
So the plucking standard belongs to the base, and the base decides most of the result.
For jasmine tea the base is usually a baked green tea picked at 1 bud with 2 leaves.
That standard gives enough body to carry scenting without turning bitter under repeated handling.
For compressed and aged types, the base follows the standard of its own region, which varies widely.
A compressed cake may contain anything from bud to coarse leaf, and often does.
Scented styles want a base with a neutral profile, since a strong base fights the flowers.
That is why a delicate green tea is rarely used for scenting, despite being more expensive.
The second stage cannot fix a poor base, and no amount of flower hides a coarse one.
Ask what the base was, because that answer explains more than the scent does.
A seller who cannot say what the base leaf was usually does not know, which is itself an answer.
Why the standard exists
The reason is absorption, which is a physical problem before it is a flavour one.
Scenting works because dried leaf is porous and takes up moisture and aroma from fresh flowers.
A leaf that is too tender is dense and shuts quickly, so it takes the scent and then loses it.
Coarse leaf has open structure but little to hold the aroma once it is there.
The middle standard, 1 bud with 2 leaves, gives both porosity and substance.
Then there is heat, because each scenting round is followed by drying at a fairly high temperature.
A base that cannot take repeated firing without scorching will not survive 9 rounds.
Compressed tea has the opposite requirement, since it needs fibre and stem to press and to age.
Fine bud material presses into a solid block that never matures properly from the inside.
So the standard differs by end use, and one base cannot serve both jobs well.
This is also why jasmine tea is made in Fujian and not everywhere, since the base and flower must meet.
Grade follows the leaf
Grade in reprocessed tea is two numbers wearing one label: the base grade and the work done to it.
For jasmine tea the base grade comes first, and a coarse base stays coarse however often it is scented.
Then comes the number of scenting rounds, which typically runs from 3 to 9.
More rounds should mean a deeper aroma, though it also means more chances to scorch the base.
The proportion of flower used matters as much as the count, and it is rarely disclosed.
For compressed tea, grade tracks the material inside the cake rather than the pressing itself.
Stem content, tip content and evenness are what a grader looks at once the cake is broken open.
Machine plucked base is common in cheap scented tea, and it shows as dust and uneven sizing.
A printed grade on a gift box is the least reliable number in this whole category.
Break the cake or empty the tin and look, because the leaf is far more honest than the label.
Season and timing
Timing here runs on two clocks, one for the base leaf and one for the flowers.
The green base for jasmine tea is picked in spring, like any other green tea.
It is then held, often for months, until the jasmine comes into flower in high summer.
Jasmine blooms from June, and the best material, called summer flower, comes in July and August, at 30 degrees or more.
The flowers are picked in the afternoon, when the buds are closed and the scent is still inside them.
They open in the evening, and that is when scenting happens, usually through the night.
So one scenting round is a night’s work, and 9 rounds means nine nights of it.
Compressed tea follows its own calendar, with base leaf picked whenever that region harvests.
Cakes are pressed in dry weather, because a wet press is how mould gets established.
Two harvests, months apart, have to meet for a jasmine tea to exist at all.