Tasting techniques.

When I'm tasting seriously (yeah..haha), I adopt the wine tasting technique of gurgling the tea while inhaling through my mouth and make this rude noise. I swirl the liquid around for 10 seconds or more to evaluate the texture. During swallowing, I concentrate on its texture going down the throat. After swallowing, my lips are closed, I breathe through my nose and count the seconds it takes for the residual taste to dissipate.

If you have attained the level that I have, you will occasionally choke while gurgling the tea and it comes out the nose. Now, that's really fun! Your guests/spouse/children will usually be entertained when that happens.

Phyll

xDust> How does everyone taste their tea? For the first infusion I will sip

First, examine and SMELL the leaf before brewing. This will give you a good start on knowing where the brewed taste is comming from.

Second, smell the brewed liquor in the cup. This will further give you a deeper foretaste of what you are drinking.

Third, sip a good amount of the tea after it has cooled enough to hold in your mouth. Allow the tea to hit ALL areas of your tongue as you swish it around your mouth. Breathe deeply and then swallow whilst noting the taste as it goes down your throat.

Aftwards, enjoy the rest of the cup in a more "normal" mode, but still paying attention to the taste as it cools. Note the taste remaining on your tongue as you continue to drink it.

Lawman, do you also smell the empty cup / bottom of gaiwan / the under lid of gaiwan and smell the wet leaves in your pot/gaiwan, etc.?

Phyll

Lawman wrote:

Hola, Dustin,

Hope life's treating you well!

I do the following, more or less. Nothing too rigidly adhered-to, but usually most of them:

1. Examine and smell the dry leaves. Get an idea of the oxidation level, and the amount of roasting. Check out the compression/rolling.
2. Examine the rinse. Frothy/filthy? Cloudy?

1. Infuse properly, and smell the lid of the pot, then the leaves themselves. Relate the scents of the lid to those in the leaves - usually perfumed vs. pungent/powerful. The lid-scent often changes as more evaporation takes place; get an idea for the way in which it evolves, and compare it to your past experiences with tea of that type.

2. Pour into aroma cup (wenxiangbei). Place the tasting cup (pinmingbei) on top. Invert, so that the soup is in the aroma cup, and serve. Pulling out the aroma cup ejects the tea, of course - the initial scent is the "bottom-cup scent" (beidixiang). Often the intense floral character, if present, may be shown here, evolving into the mid-scent. As the cup cools (perhaps over ten seconds), the "cold scent" (lengxiang) takes over. Sometimes more buttery, "brown", or rich depending on the type of tea.

1. Get tasting. Like Phyll, I'm unashamedly noisy. Sip with some air to circulate the flavour, remembering that a large portion of our taste mechanism is supported by scent. Examine the initial impact on the tongue. Feel the flavour recede to the back of the mouth, and interact with the sides of the tongue, the roof of the mouth. This "mid-taste", as I've found in the past and also noticed on Phyll's blog, is occassionally missing entirely (Phyll's "doughnut hole"). Examine the "hind-taste" as you swallow. Try to avoid nasal ejection (painful). The after-taste can tell you as much about the quality of the leaf as many other aspects - is it enduring, robust? Most of all... did you enjoy the tea? Life's too short to cope with mediocre tea. :)

Describing flavour is a whole vocabulary on its own. I tend to become inexplicably violent when I read other people using the word "mouthfeel". Then again, I use more than my share of silly words, so I'm sure it all evens out in the end.

1. Repeat 3-5 for later infusions.

1. Tip out the leaves into your vessel of choice. Are the leaves chopped? Are their edges brutally savaged, as often happens with mechanically-picked leaf? Are they beautifully preserved in their original state? What're the size and mixture like? Is there any stem-structure connecting leaves?

Toodlepip,

Hobbes

snip snip snip

Guilty. The feel of the tea in the mouth is part of the tea's pleasure, and when it is too thin or too thick, it can ruin the overall experience. This is especially true for old Sheng Pu'erhs and for well roasted WuYi's. When the mouthfeel is right, there is an ever changing flavor coating in the mouth and on the tongue, especially perhaps at the back of the throat. This can move from sweet carmel to wood or bitter/sour notes. You can hardly speak of Bao Zhong without speaking of its feel in the mouth. These are solely my own opinions. I don't mean to imply that others should feel the same way.

I know what you mean by silly words, though. Ultimately, all words are silly when it comes to tea drinking.

How do I drink? I sniff dry leaf, wet leaf, lid, liquor, empty cup, gaiwan, or pot by turns and at the right moments as the mood strikes, and with others whenever these things are offered to me for inspection. I drink by slurp and gurgle and slosh in quiet concentration. Most amazing to me is how the tea unfolds when I'm focused on it, and how different the tea drinking experience is when I'm not. Breathing out to enjoy the tea's aroma has been mentioned to me before in other context. I have to remind myself to do it. It's worth the effort.

I think by the way that that is one of the best questions that's gotten asked around here in quite awhile. Praise to the original poster.

Michael

Ah yes, it's not the concept of how tea feels in the mouth that seems to send me into a beserker Viking rage, just the word "mouthfeel". Perhaps "rage" is a bit strong. Maybe it's more of a beserker Viking niggle. Surely even Vikings had niggles. :)

I think more is better than less when drinking tea. I brew half liter pots and drink from open mouth glass cup which fills the nostrils, sensitizes the tastebuds, coats the throat, and warms the stomach which is a feedback mechanism to help you taste the tea better. I think the larger infusion is a more accurate taste profile than the where's the tea proper zodiac alignment gongfu vessel style of hit and miss. I think gongfu might be better on an empty stomach but I make a point of never being hungry as you could tell.

Jim

PS A change > How does everyone taste their tea? For the first infusion I will sip

Phyll Ah yes, it's not the concept of how tea feels in the mouth that seems

I think the responses here pretty much sum it up, but the only real difference for me that seems to be neglected in a lot of posts is that I spend as much time after I've swallowed to enjoy the aftertaste and any extra or different flavors that come through after the fact. A lot of times this is where you can pinpoint subtle flavors lost in the initial tasting. Often I find I can detect a hint of something from smelling the lid or the leaves as they brew, and the place I finally put my finger on it is in this aftertaste stage.

I smell the leaves dry, enjoy the aroma while it brews, smell the actual liquor once brewed, sip it in and move it around to cover the tounge, swallow, breathe and then pay attention to the aftertaste, then once "warmed up" I will again smell the liquor and then just enjoy the rest of the cup/pot.

- Dominic

Roy Fong at ITC is a stickler for how a tea feels in the mouth; he has at times espoused a technique involving sipping the tea, holding it in the front of the mouth and using the tongue to determine how thick or silky the tea tastes before swallowing it. Since I became aware of this I've really changed how I judge puerh teas. The really good ones sometimes have a very subtle taste but great mouthfeel, although one would hope they would have both.

I'm really digg> snip snip snip

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Yes, I understood. Actually, I'm not fond of buzz words either, especial those commonly applied to tea. We're on the same page. Still guilty, though.

Anybody here know how far the finger tap on the table to signify "thank you" extends into other areas of Chinese culture? That is, is this signal commonly used in other context beyond tea? Just curious?

Michael

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Or we could just be more specific about what we mean, since different teas present differently in this regard.

I'm drinking a Bai Ji Guan this morning that's full of flavor and a warm sweet complex finish of wood-flower. The finish comes up only after the tea is well down the throat, comes up as a floral-fruit friendly essence, and then changes going toward something just hinting of metal. This *might* be a sense of the feeling called "mouthfeel," but I usually use that word to describe a thickness in the liquor that carries the flavors throughout the mouth just right somehow. Anyway, buzz buzz.

Michael (equally guilty)

One example - if someone lights your cigarette, you tap their hand twice. I always thought that was really classy. Otherwise I think just for tea and alcohol.

As for the term 'mouthfeel', I always assumed that it came from the Chinese term 'kougan', but I learned here

that it appeared in the NYT in 1973 - probably too early to have been introduced by tea nerds.

Alex Nasty cold, home from work, haven't decided what to drink yet

I use the term "mouthfeel" because it's a direct translation of the word "kougan". There's no way to describe that term.

For young puerh, it is pretty much the ONLY criteria that should be used to evaluate the tea, because almost all the flavours will change over the course of aging, but mouthfeel is something that will stay constant and will tell you more about the quality of the tea than any flavour you're getting from it for now. A puerh that tastes great now might not age into something great, and vice versa. In fact, if a puerh tastes too good (for example, if it reminds you of a good oolong) it's probably not good for aging. If it's not bitter at all or not astringent at all, it's probably not good for aging. If it's too fragrant, it's probably not good for aging.

While I'm not in the "it has to taste nasty now for it to be great" school, it is unfortunately true that some producers now are making puerh that tastes great now, but at the possible price of its future. Some renowned Taiwanese puerh makers are guilty of this.

MarshalN

I use the term "mouthfeel" because it's a direct translation of the word "kougan". There's no way to describe that term.

For young puerh, it is pretty much the ONLY criteria that should be used to evaluate the tea, because almost all the flavours will change over the course of aging, but mouthfeel is something that will stay constant and will tell you more about the quality of the tea than any flavour you're getting from it for now. A puerh that tastes great now might not age into something great, and vice versa. In fact, if a puerh tastes too good (for example, if it reminds you of a good oolong) it's probably not good for aging. If it's not bitter at all or not astringent at all, it's probably not good for aging. If it's too fragrant, it's probably not good for aging.

While I'm not in the "it has to taste nasty now for it to be great" school, it is unfortunately true that some producers now are making puerh that tastes great now, but at the possible price of its future. Some renowned Taiwanese puerh makers are guilty of this.

MarshalN

Want to put my 2 jiao into the conversation, but I'm not sure where; here seems suitable.

Along with checking out the residual aftertaste and the 'kougan' (mouthfeel?) by holding the tea in my mouth at various places, I like to slurp the tea when drinking. I feel it aerates the tea a bit, not only cooling it, but sorta massaging my tongue with the various nuances all over my tongue. Usually after the second sip, I will do what others have said and experiment with which part of my tongue to expose the tea to.

Could you describe what pleases your mouth in a Pu'er?

/Lew

A large Puerh dealer in Kunming, who tutored me early on, held similar views. This guy sells literally sells tons of puerh every month, he owns his own shop in the oldest market in Kunming, he also works directly with the owners of that tea market itself in Kunming, he has proven himself to me time and again as being extremely knowledgeable in his craft.

Anyway, he taught me that a good aging candidate will have a certain strength in its youth, and that it is this strength that develops into the characters we appreciate in an aged gem. He warned me against investing in sweet tasting young puerhs like the silver tip ones that are popular now. These taste great now but do not have that strength (could he be referring to a form of Qi?) that make them worthy of taking up storage space for years. He also warned me against many of these mild tasting young puerhs as they also do not have the strength required for aging. Cakes that he sent me that he described as being good candidates did have a lot of astringency and were often bitter, they did not taste great when young but some were drinkable if you acquire the taste for astringency, others were simply too strong. He taught me to be conscious of the feeling in my body, to look for the "flush" that would start in my chest and spread up through my head, this was the strength he was referring to, not to be confused with caffeine either.

Wang also warned me about many of these so called wild arbor cakes. Many of them come from trees in old abandoned plantations. He spoke of five families who used to own most of these plantations. He said many of the plantations were abandoned because the soils had been depleted and the trees simply did not yield good tea anymore. Now many, particularly Taiwanese, speculators are investing in these old plantations. The tea from them will not live up to the hype, from what I am told.

-- Mike Petro