We all know how to taste. When presented with food, people will immediately have an opinion of it. But when presented with tea, the reaction is significantly different.
In one of my classes, a student asked me after tasting a tea. He wanted to know what he should be looking for. What are the notes? What is the nose? What vocabulary should he use to describe what he is experiencing? As someone who learnt about tea in the traditional Chinese sense, I was surprised to hear this. Not because of the questions asked, but because the logic behind the questions are very different from I, and many other tea experts, are used to.
There are three main points to the enjoyment and understanding of tea.
- The taste at the tip of your tongue.
- How it feels in the back of your throat.
- After taking a sip, close your mouth and breathe out from your nose and see how much of the fragrance comes back.
So let’s go over these three important points.
The taste at the tip of your tongue.
After taking a small sip of the tea, take notice on how the tea liquid feels on the tip of your tongue, and slowly observe how it taste as the liquid goes down. Does it bring some picture to your mind? How intense are these flavors and how complex is it?
Fragrant, floral, freshness, fruity, spicy, rich, smoky, grassy, are all different camps in which tea can be classified in. However, do not let these limit your expression of what you experience when drinking tea. Tea has its own vocabulary and we encourage you to say the first thing that comes to your mind when tasting tea.
How it feels in the back of your throat.
The back of your throat will tell you about the quality of the tea leaves and how well it is steeped. An over-steeped tea or and overload of artificial flavoring will cause the throat to feel dry and itchy. A good tea that is brewed well should soothe the throat and leave a slight aroma as you breathe out.
The returning fragrance.
This is a difficult term to translate, but in Chinese it is called 回甘 (hui gan). Simply put, after taking a sip of tea, close your mouth and breathe out slowly from your nose. How much of the tea’s fragrance returns? How intense is it? Where does it come from? The fragrance of a very good Golden Lily oolong can be felt in the esophagus, and will rise up to the sinuses.
As you steep the tea once more, do this test again, to see if the intensity of the returning fragrance is the same. A good tea can maintain this for five full steeps.
Use these three steps on every steep of tea.
It is important to practice these steps for every steep of tea. Some tea can fulfill these criteria for only one or two steeps. A tea that we at Luv Tea would recommend must have these criteria for all three steeps. Some of the top oolongs can go up to ten steeps, if not more.
By being mindful of these steps, you will eventually also learn how to differentiate between a tea that is full of flavorings and a tea that is of high quality.
Originally published on June 2nd, 2020.