As we have connoisseurs of wine, so we have connoisseurs of tea, and tea tasting is as much an art as wine tasting ever was.  As in wine tasting, there are many aspects to tea tasting, the color, the aroma, the actual flavor and taste, etc. Also like wine tasting, tea tasting involves a lot of spitting. Tea tasting involves as many as four of our five senses:

Sense of Touch:

Before the tea is brewed, the taster touches and physically examines the dry leaf tea for texture and feel.

The Visual Sense:

The taster will examine not only the tea in terms of its color and hue, but also the way that the tea leaves look. The taster examines the dry leaf tea to begin with. For instance if it is black tea that is being examined, it should have a uniform black color with golden tips. There should not be brown among the black, because that denotes the presence of stem among the leaves.

The taster will also examine carefully the color of the brewed tea, for uniformity and brightness. While some recommend the use of white porcelain to give the best color representation, others recommend clear glass, which lets in the light and permits one to see how the color reacts to the light.

Sense of Smell:

As anyone with a cold has observed, a large part of our sense of taste is determined by our sense of smell, and in fact the smelling of a tea is important portion of the tasting process. The aroma of tea (as in the case of wine tasting importance is given to the bouquet) is important in determining its quality.

Sense of Taste:

Some experts recommend sipping not delicately but with a proper slurp, so that the tea flavor and taste reaches every part of the mouth; better to enjoy and identify the taste. A spoon full of the tea is tasted and swirled around in the mouth in order to gauge its taste.  Now it is not only the flavor and taste of the tea that is examined, but also the strength, pungency and freshness. It is then spat out.

A gifted taster should be possessed to an extensive palette memory, which will permit him to taste a tea and evaluate it against other teas he may have tasted over the years. As each crop of tea will have different nuances, such a palette memory is very valuable to a taster. A taster’s job is not only to taste, but to grade the tea and suggest ways of improvement.

Tags: aroma, art, brew, look, pungency, smell, taste, tasting, tea, touch