Tasting Notes: Building a Vocabulary That Is Actually Useful
Separate what you smell from what you taste from what you feel, and the notes become useful.
Tea tasting notes have a reputation for pretension, largely because they are frequently written to impress rather than to record. Used properly, a tasting note is a memory aid that lets you buy the same tea again and understand why you liked it.
Separate the Components
The main technique is to attend to one thing at a time rather than forming a general impression. Four components, considered in sequence, produce far more information than drinking attentively but unstructured.
The four components
- Dry leaf aroma. Smell the leaf before brewing, and again after warming it in the pot.
- Wet leaf aroma. After the first infusion, smell the leaf and the empty vessel. Frequently the most revealing.
- Taste. The five basic tastes, plus the aromatic compounds perceived retronasally.
- Texture and finish. Body, astringency, and what remains after swallowing.
A Tasting Sequence
- Smell the dry leaf and note the first three things that come to mind.
- Warm the vessel, add the leaf, and smell again — heat releases much more aroma.
- Brew, and smell the liquor before tasting.
- Take a small sip and hold it briefly; note the initial taste.
- Swallow and breathe out through the nose; much of flavour is perceived this way.
- Note the finish: what remains, and for how long.
- Smell the empty cup once cooled, which frequently reveals notes the hot liquor masked.
- Repeat across infusions and note how the tea changes.
Texture Is Underrated
Body, viscosity and mouthfeel distinguish teas as much as flavour does and are described far less. A tea can be thin and aromatic or thick and simple, and the difference is immediately noticeable once you attend to it.
| Term | Means |
|---|---|
| Thin or watery | Little body; the liquid feels like water |
| Full or thick | Substantial weight in the mouth |
| Creamy | Smooth and coating, common in some oolongs |
| Astringent | Drying, puckering sensation; a texture, not a taste |
| Brisk | Lively and refreshing, often in good black tea |
| Smooth | No rough edges; typical of well-aged tea |
Astringency is a tactile sensation rather than a flavour. Recognising that separates it from bitterness, and the two are different problems with different causes.Osric Delaine
Build Your Own Vocabulary
Published flavour wheels are useful references and can be constraining. A note that says 'like the greenhouse at my grandmother's' is more useful to you than 'vegetal, herbaceous', because it will actually bring the tea back when you read it later.
The purpose is recall, not communication with strangers. Personal references work better than borrowed vocabulary, and you can always translate when discussing a tea with someone else.
Comparative Tasting
Tasting one tea alone tells you less than tasting two side by side. Differences are much easier to perceive than absolute qualities, and a comparison immediately reveals characteristics that would be invisible in isolation.
- Compare two teas of the same type from different producers.
- Compare the same tea brewed two ways.
- Compare the same tea from two harvests.
- Keep everything except the variable identical: same water, temperature, ratio and time.
- Taste blind where possible; expectation shapes perception considerably.
Recording
A useful note contains the practical brewing details as well as the impressions: leaf weight, water volume, temperature, times for each infusion, and what you would change. Without those, an enthusiastic note is unrepeatable.
- Tea name, seller, harvest date.
- Brewing parameters actually used.
- Dry leaf, wet leaf and liquor aromas.
- Taste and texture across infusions.
- Verdict and what you would change next time.
Taste the same tea repeatedly
Perception improves with familiarity. A tea tasted five times over a month reveals characteristics that were invisible on the first attempt, and the improvement is in your attention rather than in the tea. This is the single most effective way to develop a palate.
On Pretension
Elaborate tasting language attracts mockery and some of it is deserved. The test is whether a note is doing work: helping the writer remember, or helping a reader decide. A note that does neither is decoration.
Write for the version of yourself who will read it in six months, wondering whether to order more. That standard produces useful notes and quietly eliminates the showing off.