How to Taste Tea: A Simple Method for Noticing More

To taste tea properly, slow down and check it in order: look at and smell the dry leaf, smell the warmed leaf and the lid, look at the colour of the liquor, then sip and notice four things in turn: aroma, taste, texture and aftertaste. Finish by looking at the spent leaf, and follow the tea across several steeps. The fastest way to learn is to taste two teas side by side, brewed the same way, and write down what you notice.

For my first few years with Chinese tea I drank a lot and noticed little. I could tell you if I liked something, and that was about it. What changed it was a small notebook. A friend who'd been drinking pu-erh far longer than me told me to write three lines after every session: what it smelled like, how it felt in the mouth, and what stayed after I swallowed. The first month of notes was embarrassing. "Nice. Smooth. Tea-like." But after a few months the words got sharper, and so did my tasting.

That notebook became the tasting log I still keep today, and the method below is what I use in every session, including the ones I host at home in Slovenia for friends who are just starting out. None of it needs special equipment or a trained palate. It needs attention, and a little patience with yourself.

Before you start#

A few conditions make tasting much easier:

• Brew gongfu if you can. Short steeps in a small vessel let you taste the tea's progression. If you're new to it, see my gongfu tea guide and the brewing chart.
• Use a white porcelain gaiwan or cup. White shows the colour honestly and porcelain doesn't add any flavour of its own. More on why in my teaware guide.
• Use good water. Very hard water flattens aroma and can make you think a tea is worse than it is. See water for tea.
• No strong flavours before or during. Coffee, spicy food, perfume and scented candles all get in the way.
• Let the tea cool a little. Very hot tea hides flavour. Many aromas show up best as the cup cools.

The method, step by step#

1. Look at and smell the dry leaf#

Look for whole, even leaves without dust, stems or odd bits (unless the style includes stems, as some oolongs do). Notice the colour and shape. Then smell it. Dry leaf often smells quite different from the brewed tea: a Wuyi oolong might smell of roasted nuts dry and of stone fruit when wet.

2. Smell the warmed leaf#

Preheat your gaiwan with hot water, pour it out, add the leaf and close the lid for a few seconds. Then lift the lid and smell. The heat wakes up the aroma, and this is often the most intense smell of the whole session. It's one of my favourite moments in any tea.

3. Look at the liquor#

After the first steep, look at the colour in a white cup. Is it clear or cloudy? Bright or dull? Is there a golden or reddish ring at the edge? Clarity and brightness usually point to careful processing. Colour intensity, on the other hand, tells you little about quality. A darker cup isn't a better one.

4. Smell the aroma#

Smell the tea in three places: the inside of the gaiwan lid, the tea in the cup, and the empty cup after you've drunk it. The empty-cup aroma (sometimes called "bottom of the cup" aroma) is often sweet and lingering in good oolongs and red teas.

5. Sip and taste#

Take a small sip and let it spread across your tongue. Some people slurp to pull in air, which helps carry aroma to the back of the nose. Notice the basic tastes: sweetness, bitterness, sourness, savouriness. Then notice flavours: flowers, fruit, honey, grain, wood, roast, mineral. Don't worry about naming them precisely at first. "Something like stewed apricot" is a perfectly good tasting note.

6. Notice texture#

This is where most beginners stop too early. How does the tea feel in the mouth? Thin and watery, or thick and oily? Smooth, or rough and drying? Does it coat the mouth? Texture is one of the clearest signs of good leaf, especially in pu-erh and oolong.

7. Wait for the aftertaste#

Swallow and wait. What stays behind? A good tea leaves something: sweetness that rises in the throat a few seconds later, a cooling feeling, a lingering aroma when you breathe out. Chinese tea drinkers call the returning sweetness hui gan (回甘) and the lingering feeling in the throat hou yun (喉韵). An ordinary tea simply disappears.

8. Look at the spent leaf#

When the session is over, spread the wet leaves on the gaiwan lid or a white plate. Good leaf is supple and fairly whole, with an even colour. Lots of broken pieces, very uneven colour, or leaves that feel papery or mushy tell you something about the raw material or processing. One simple check that it's real tea leaf: the side veins of a tea leaf curve up and join before they reach the edge, and the edge has clear serrations.

Follow the tea across steeps#

A single cup is a snapshot. The real test is the whole session. Good tea develops gradually: the aroma shifts, the body stays, and the tea stays pleasant well into later steeps. A weaker tea is loud in the first two steeps and then falls flat or turns bitter and thin.

A useful habit from the pu-erh world: once in a session, try one deliberately long steep. A good tea stays balanced even when pushed. A poor one shows every flaw at once.

Tasting vocabulary#

Chinese tea people use a set of words for texture and feel that are more useful than any flavour wheel. Here are the ones I use most, adapted from the language of pu-erh tasting:

A note on bitterness and astringency: a little of both is normal, especially in young sheng pu-erh and green tea. What matters is whether it transforms. Bitterness that turns into sweetness a few seconds later is a good sign. Dryness that just sits there is not.

For more tea terms, see the glossary.

Side-by-side tasting: the fastest way to learn#

Tasting two teas at the same time, brewed exactly the same way, is the most honest comparison there is. It's also how I learned more in one evening than in months of casual drinking.

1. Use two identical gaiwans and identical cups.
2. Use the same amount of leaf, the same water, the same temperature and the same steep times.
3. If you can, have someone else prepare them so you don't know which is which.
4. Don't look at prices or labels until you've written your notes.

Good pairs to start with: a sheng and a shou pu-erh, a green-style and a roasted Tieguanyin, or two red teas from different regions. The differences become obvious when they sit next to each other.

What not to judge a tea by#

It's easy to be influenced by things that have nothing to do with what's in the cup. Taiwanese pu-erh expert Liao Yirong put together a well-known list of things not to judge a tea by, and it applies well beyond pu-erh:

• The age written on the label.
• The packaging.
• How dark the liquor is.
• A strong "storage" smell.
• Claims about how old the trees are.

Judge by what you taste: a clean flavour, good texture, a lasting aftertaste and a tea that holds up across steeps.

A simple tasting log#

Here's the template I use. Keep it short, or you'll stop doing it.

Read next: Your First Chinese Tea Flight and Chinese Tea for Coffee Drinkers.