For most of us, it’s a small jump from broadening our palates to developing a working vocabulary for describing and remembering specialty teas. Certainly we have the traditional tasting vocabulary with such descriptors as ‘bakey, harsh, thin’,  etc., to refer to when cupping teas for defects, but these leave much to be desired when tasting teas with a customer or analyzing a cup with the intention of writing an appealing, accurate and memorable description of a given tea.

‘Specialty Teas’ as a category are somewhat new to the industry here in the West, thus we deal with the lack of standardized descriptors. Possibly this is a blessing in disguise as it encourages creativity and allows for artistic license but, none the less, this lack can leave us feeling a bit hopeless at times when a good descriptor is needed. This is especially true when it comes to unflavored or unscented Specialty Teas. It is these teas that I’m addressing herein.

So how do we go about developing a vocabulary to describe these wonderful teas? Well this is how I do it. I develop my palate in those food categories that seem to relate to Specialty Teas. It’s fun and it seems to work.

Example: I’ve found that in some green teas there are often many ‘vegetal’

notes in the nose and/or cup. Often times I find the sweet or pungent nose and/or flavor of artichokes, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, peas (usually canned peas) or bell peppers in a cup of fine green tea.

Knowing this, and wanting to further develop my descriptive vocabulary, I’ve taken to sniffing and tasting these particular vegetables in there various formats and developing a fairly accurate palate and nose for them along the journey. There is a big difference in the aroma and taste of an artichoke heart when analyzed as a raw vegetable, a boiled vegetable, a broiled, canned or sautéed vegetable. Get to know them all and you’ll have a better chance of accurately describing that next ‘cup’ with lovely artichoke notes. Generalize on this theme and get familiar with the other vegetables I mentioned and you’ll have a good start to refining your ‘vegetal green teas’ vocabulary. Add any vegetable to this list, then chop and cook away, opening cans, sniffing puree’s tasting the water you boil in - do it all and make a day of it. 

Don’t limit your palate development to green teas though. Include fruits, nuts and nut oils in the mix when sniffing and cooking away . . .  even flowers are important (be careful not to ingest some toxic flower though!).  There are certainly an abundance of  nutty (raw, roasted, boiled, pressed for oil), fruity (fresh, canned, jammed, stewed, dried, pureed), and floral (usually fresh or infused) notes to be found in many oolong, black and white teas. And get to know the aromatic grains like corn (corn silk, fresh corn kernels, canned, creamed),  oats, flax, barley, etc… and then there are the honeys (dark, light, clover, orange blossom) and beeswax. And mushrooms!

The list is endless.

In closing I’m going to guess that many of you enjoy fine wines or cooking and are already busy sniffing and tasting.  As Specialty Tea drinkers we’ve already proven that we can exercise our ability to develop a discerning palate, so taking this next step in developing a great tea vocabulary will come naturally to many of us…and we can have fun doing it!

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