Aroma and Taste Components of Four Kinds of Tea Made from Autumn Fresh Leaves of “Lifeng”

The green tea made from fresh leaves of new tea variety “Lifeng” has an obvious chestnut fragrance and excellent quality, but the quality characteristics of other teas made from “Lifeng” are still unclear. In this work, the autumn fresh leaves of “Lifeng” were processed into green tea, white tea, oolong tea, and black tea, named as LFGT, LFWT, LFOT, and LFBT, respectively. To explore their quality characteristics, the catechins, flavonoids, amino acids, and aroma substances of LFGT, LFWT, LFOT, and LFBT were analyzed by HPLC, UPLC-LC/MS, and HS-SPME-GC/MS. The results showed that the order of catechin contents of four kinds of tea was LFGT > LFOT > LFBT > LFWT. The total content of flavonoids was LFBT > LFGT > LFWT > LFOT. The flavonol glycoside content in LFBT was significantly higher compared to the other three types of tea. Additionally, the Que-glycoside levels were markedly higher than those of Kae-glycoside and Myr-glycoside across all four tea types. The total amino acid content in LFBT was also significantly lower than that in LFGT, LFWT, and LFOT. LFGT exhibited higher levels of aldehydes and alkanes but lower levels of alcohols and esters compared to the other three teas. Conversely, LFWT had elevated levels of esters and other volatile compounds, while LFOT was characterized by a particularly high alkene content relative to the other teas.