Tea Tasting Notes

Tea is the life-giving force, the energy that comes from a terroir. Its tasting should be regarded more as a craft rather than a commodity. When you look at its expansion throughout history, the etymology of the word tea is derived from its historical heritage and expansionism. Through the Silk Roads, if tea was spread to a country by land, it would be called cha, whereas when it was spread by sea, it was tea, as it was used in coastal regions. But tea is also an enabler of intimate relations forged between people and plants.

All true tea comes from the same plant, Camellia sinensis, which is native to East Asia and branches into six types of plants during the processing stage. These differences can be tasted based on withering, which can be altered with other notes (like bergamot oil in Earl Grey). The breakdown of teas is what differentiates them from one another through oxidation.

The uniqueness in tea tasting resides in its lack of one single crafted recipe for creating the perfect cup. Its preparation has its individuality, affinity with water and heat, with Taoists even claiming it as the “elixir of immortality.” Okakura famously stated: “Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordids of everyday existence,”  a form of resistance to the East’s perception of Japanese culture demanding universal esteem. Tasseography is an art in itself and is believed to read a person’s fortunes and requires observing patterns, shapes and symbols, not treating the beverage as a form of consumption but as a transformatory, semi-magical process of swirling, inverting, and establishing patterns in the cup. 

Choosing a time for steeping loose tea is a skill, the only way to measure it being through your eyes. If the leaves are broken, with a greater surface area, they will steep more quickly than in an unbroken form. The appearance of the leaves or the aroma of the infusion will tell you whether they are palatable. Steeping my tea requires me to be patient and intuitive, as opposed to coffee being brewed and ready. For me, coffee retains the effervescence and hustle-bustle of everyday life. Tea contains L-theanine, an amino acid proven to promote relaxation and mindful alertness; it is a panacea that will force you into a quiet half-hour break in your day. There is a lovely Moroccan proverb that states: “The first glass is bitter as life, the second is as strong as love, the third is as gentle as death.” This is so particular to the sensations tea drinking brings me through my clay teapot filled with Gong fu cha, which absorbs the hints of tea flavours and becomes seasoned over time. The beauty of tea tasting resides in how, in one tea-drinking session, you are able to experience the tea blossom, as earlier steepings are light in taste and colour, and the steepings grow in strength before subsiding completely. 

When I drink green tea, sencha, the longer the steaming process, the less pristine the final leaves will be, as the steaming process breaks down the leaf structure. I love its astringency and bitterness, the drying sensation on the tongue, when I most likely steeped it for too long or the water was too hot. Matcha is found in ishiusu, a large granite mill that brings its bright colour. Gyokuro or “jade dew” has a stronger vegetal, umami-packed taste, as the concentration of polyphenols in the leaves decreases. They are both prepared through a kyusu teapot, known as senchado, and the first leaves are highly sought after. At the beginning of April, when tea buds come out of winter dormancy, the first green teas, known as pre-Qing Ming teas, are harvested before the festival of the same name. My favourite green tea is probably xi hu long jing, grown in China’s Zhejiang Province, where the leaves are withered in the sun and finished (fixed, shaped and dried) entirely in the pan. 

Yellow tea is heated soon after harvest, but the leaves are then wrapped in cloth bundles. Rare are the teas that appeal to both olfactory and visual senses, like bai hao yin zhen, “white hair silver needle.” The buds of this tea are presented as tiny translucent hairs that are surprisingly sweet and contain more caffeine than any other portion of the tea plant. It contains energy in the form of sugar to open up into a full bud set. 

Black teas have the widest range of sweetness and intensity, ranging from China's Dian hongs, more sweet and malty, steeping up to a beautiful red colour, to India’s Assam blacks, which can brew up a liquor brisk. Black tea is the most consumed tea in the world (knowing that tea itself is the most consumed beverage after water). Darjeeling tea leaves are famous for their uniform size and produce a muscatel flavour known as the “champagne of teas.” I personally hate adding milk and sugar to them, precisely because of their oxidation, and that they require the most inducing and controlling oxidation process found in teas. Fermented teas like pu’er present themselves as a disc or ‘bing’ cake, seldom presented as an art form. From the Yunnan Province, they can be raw (sheng) or cooked (shu).

Illustration by Mokshita Nagandla