Maybe you've been invited to a "tea tasting" event, or maybe you'd like to host one for friends, or maybe you're simply interested in keeping a journal with tasting notes of teas you're exploring (It's OK, tea can be a social hobby or an introverted one!).
While it's entirely possible to enjoy tea without using detailed descriptions, this practice can enhance your appreciation and understanding of tea drinking. Developing your palate, so to speak, can also help you navigate the wide world of tea and find more teas you love.
A gongfu tea session with an aged, sun-dried Yunnan white tea
But if you're new to describing tea, this practice might seem intimidating. Are there rules? Will I sound silly? Am I describing this right? What’s this flavor? What’s that smell? If you’re surrounded by experienced tea drinkers, you might be afraid to open your mouth, lest you reveal your inexperience.
We’re here to use a couple of decades of tea experience to give you a booster shot of confidence. With a little bit of perspective and a few adjectives in your hip pocket, the whole experience will be transformed from anxiety-inducing to joyful.
In this guide, you'll learn helpful concepts that will enhance your ability to put names to what your taste buds and senses are detecting, as well as tips for hosting your own tea tasting sessions.
The Three Rules of Tea Tasting
There aren't actually any rules for tea tasting, but if you follow this guidance, your success and enjoyment are assured. Here's what you need to know to have a pleasant time with others, enjoy the beginner stages of tea tasting, and build your own mental library of tasting notes.
The Golden Rule: Don't Be a Jerk
As someone who has witnessed actual fights break out at tea tables in China, we can say with confidence that some people take tea far too seriously. Hopefully you won't see or participate in a literal fistfight over tea, but it pays to be aware of the vibes and attitudes that you and others bring to the table. This is meant to be fun and relaxing, and a potential way to connect to likeminded people.
Serving tea into a small gongfu teacup for tasting
While you can only control your own actions, you can set an example and tone for a shared tea session (or even an online discussion) by allowing plenty of graceful breathing room for everyone involved. If you notice that there are self-appointed experts present who seem to take tea very seriously, perhaps you can learn something from them; if not, you can always set up your own tea tasting table with a mellower mood with the hosting tips we'll get to shortly.
Start at the Beginning
We have hosted tea tastings all over the world and our first instruction for taking notes on flavors and fragrances is always to write down the very first thing that comes to mind. Doesn’t matter how strange, how brutish, how unrefined it might sound. In fact, it's vital that you teach yourself to be honest and let those descriptions flow!
Shou Puer tea, which may or may not have notes of log
If you taste a tea and think “tastes like log,” good, that’s a start! If you have a tea and think “reminds me of Lucky Charms,” good, write that down. If a tea smells like a stoner’s basement, alright, that means we are getting somewhere. There’s no need to be ashamed of a descriptor because it doesn’t fit the mold of what other people expect or the flowery, sometimes nauseating prose you see in tea marketing. (Not ours though, we would never do that.)
Remember That All Tasting Notes are Comparisons
Flavor understanding is built upon previous experience. At a tea tasting in China, somebody might say “this has a fragrance similar to sticky rice,” but to a person in America, that reference might fall flat.
We all grow up with different points of flavor reference, and if you are new to tea, you are likely forging new pathways to understand flavor profiles that are unfamiliar. A common version of this is new tea drinkers experiencing shou Puer for the first time and thinking “this all tastes like damp wood,” which is partly true, but also it’s just the first curtain that needs to be pulled back to see the opera.
When you find yourself using a broad, general description like that, see if you can go deeper: is that damp wood old or new? Was there a thunderstorm or a gentle spring rain? What type or types of wood? While this might seem slightly silly, your brain will start to yield more and more detailed notes if you press it. This type of creative flourish is what sets authentic tasting notes apart and makes them interesting.
Raw Puer tea in a gaiwan, our famed Yiwu blend 2023 Last Thoughts
You might recall the first time you drank a beer, coffee or wine being similarly befuddling. Your first sip of beer was likely a wincing face at the bitterness, but after trying different beers, the nuances of the style become apparent. Tea is no different, experience will help to illuminate the full picture. Don’t be afraid of struggling through the early confusion, it will pass.
If you are keeping an actual tea tasting journal, which is helpful but by no means required, you could create a section with a master list of flavor notes and descriptors to pull from. Any time you notice a new nuance, or hear a compelling description from someone else's tasting notes, you can add it to this section for future reference. This helps a lot with the common situation of "I taste something really interesting but don't quite have the words for it." Over time, your ability to pair up words with what you're tasting will improve and become more automatic.
A mini 7 gram serving of raw Puer tea in a ruyao gaiwan
Tea Characteristics Beyond Flavor and How to Talk About Them
Flavor and fragrances are at the forefront, but what else is going on in tea? Appearance, astringency, bitterness, body, finish, and body feel are other aspects of tea that should catch your attention.
As you nose your tea, and before you take your first sip, be sure to also look at what's in your cup. Is the liquid clear or turbid; light yellow-green, golden, ruby-red, or deep brown or black? Does it have "legs" that cling to the cup when you slosh it? Is it steaming? In what ways does it look different from the last cup you poured? Connecting as many of your senses to the tea session as possible places you in the moment and in the best position to enjoy the sipping experience.
Beyond visual appearance, there are a number of mouth sensations that aren't directly related to flavor and which you can note.
Astringency is the drying sensation in the mouth that causes puckering or tightening caused by the tannins in the tea; you may have also experienced this feeling with tannic red wines.
Bitterness is a characteristic that is sought after by some and loathed by others, but can be beneficial as it leaves a sweet finish in the mouth.
The body of the tea describes its mouth feeling, whether it is thick and heavy, or light and airy. Be sure to swirl the tea around your mouth a moment and think of how to best describe it.
The returning sweetness in the mouth that some teas have in their finish is often called huigan. Other teas may provide a sense of cooling similar to menthol, or other lingering sensations or flavors. Keep paying attention to your senses after you have swallowed the tea.
Body feel refers to any of the subjective feelings you get in your body after drinking a tea. While not everyone experiences them, it's undeniable that certain teas give certain people body sensations like heaviness, lightness, cooling, warming, tingling on the back of your head, heavy feet, or even a sort of "body high."
A gongfu tea session, with teapot, teacup and tea pitcher
The Gongfu Tea Experience
While you can brew tea many different ways, gongfu style tea preparation will allow for the best experience of a tea’s nuanced aroma and taste. If you’ve never heard of gongfu tea, don’t let anybody tell you that it’s daunting or overly complicated; it’s surprisingly easy. The basic principle is to use a small vessel (around 70-150 ml) and a higher ratio of tea (about 1g per 15ml) and steep with shorter, faster steeps. A simple gaiwan, a tea pitcher (you can use a cream pitcher or any small pitcher from home) and a teacup (even a mug would work in a pinch); even a basic setup like this is enough to get started.
We've got an entire gongfu guide for beginners covering equipment and technique and more, but if you're planning to host an event, don't miss the tea tasting tips for hosts at the end of the guide you're currently reading.
How to Experience Aromatics and Flavors in a Tea Session
You can smell and experience nearly everything in a gongfu tea session, beginning with the dry leaf, on to the rinsed wet leaf and smells left in the wake of the rinse in the cups and pitcher, on to the actual tea itself that you drink. Higher quality teas will have nuanced characteristics that unfold throughout the session, with different aromatics emerging from steep to steep, and flavor profiles that evolve as you go. One of the great joys of a tea session is the range of sensory delights that present themselves throughout the tea session. Take your time, smell everything, and enjoy.
Common Tasting Notes for Different Tea Types
Ok, that’s all great, but what adjectives do I use to talk about different teas? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. When in doubt, just toss around some of the below flavor profiles, whichever seem to closely fit your experience, and people might mistake you for a pro.
Raw Puer Tea, Typical Adjectives and Descriptors
Raw Puer tea is a category of tea that is as broad as it is complex. Different regions of Yunnan will produce wildly different flavor profiles and the fact that the tea is often aged adds another layer of intrigue. Arguably, raw Puer also provides the most diversity of non-flavor sensory characteristics and body feelings, too.
When raw Puer is fresh, it tends to be bright and astringent, with floral flavors, honey-like sweetness, or rampaging bitterness. As raw Puer ages, sandalwood and herbaceous qualities can emerge, as can incense and aged honey. Even in middle age, raw Puer can develop a sappy sweetness that is extremely engaging, as the profile of the tea and the tannins are smoothed with proper storage.
Ripe Puer Tea, How to Talk About the Forest
Ripe Puer tea, which is made from a pile fermentation process, tends to have a more easily defined profile. Though, as with its raw Puer base material, the regional differences add another layer of complexity on the pile. While some shou Puer can have fierce bitterness, or resounding yeasty sweetness like a fresh bakery, almost all shou Puer teas have a heavy note of wood. Most tea drinkers will note the damp forest floor, trees after a rainstorm or petrichor. Fresh young shou Puer may even have what some perceive as a fishy note (which is why white2tea rests our ripe Puer after production to avoid this issue, with sincere apologies to the extremely small minority of fish flavor appreciators out there).
A tieguanyin oolong style tea from Fujian province
Oolong Teas, the Flavor and Fragrance Powerhouse
Oolong teas have many regional and varietal differences, as well as differences in processing, all of which add up to a category with amazing depth of flavor and fragrance. Dancong oolongs from Guangdong province have extremely floral and fruity teas, often reminiscent of stone fruit or honey. Tieguanyin from Fujian province, also often called Iron Goddess of Mercy, can have a wide range from roasted seaweed to florality. Yancha oolongs from Fujian, also called rock teas, can have a mineral character and a heavily roasted quality, described with terms like campfire, charcoal roasted, mineral and even cinnamon spice.
White Teas
Fresh white teas from Yunnan tend to have a cotton candy sweetness and honeysuckle aromatics, though some are also fruity. Fujian white teas tend to be bright when fresh, with flavor profiles like coconut oil. Creamy stone fruit white teas are also out there, as are aged whites with a unique profile of sweet and smooth vanilla spice.
A shade dried white tea from Yunnan province
Green Teas
Green teas have a tighter flavor spectrum than most tea types. The words vegetal, bright, grassy and beany will describe most green teas. Occasionally they will have floral elements too, and if they are roasted they might even have notes of chestnut. Japanese green teas will also often have a quality that many liken to umami and seaweed.
Black Teas
Yunnan black teas are typically thick bodied and can have a chocolatey, malty sweetness, though they can also have notes of ripe red fruits. Fujian black teas also have teas in the chocolate malt roast territory, but bright and jammy character is also common. Classic Lapsang is also a smokey favorite, as are the less common lapsangs that taste like a trip to the fruit market.
Our Zhenghe Red, a black tea from Fujian province
How to Host a Tea Tasting Session
A tea tasting event or session can mean many different things, from casually chilling with a few friends and talking about tea and life, to a "serious" formal event built around gongfu style brewing with people who take this type of thing "seriously" and are expecting to be wowed. Depending on the goals of your session, there are plenty of decisions to be made, like: one big vessel or several smaller ones? how much do you explain the tea to the room? what is the expected etiquette of the host and guests? And so forth. We're going to give you some pointers on how we think about all this stuff.
Also, if you've got aspirations to host formal events, perhaps even charging money to cover your costs or create some profit from your favorite hobby, our best advice is that you start small. You'll find that in general tea tasting events can be like herding cats, so it's better to figure out what works for you with a few friends or family members as test subjects before you find yourself with 10-20+ strangers expecting a well-coordinated and unique tasting experience. We personally find an intimate group of 3-8 people to be an ideal place to begin.
A larger gongfu teapot for serving a group of people
Teaware and setup for a session
With small to medium groups (3-6 people), you can use standard gongfu vessels like 100-150 ml teapots and gaiwans, fairly easily. Once you get into larger groups of 7-10 people or so, larger vessels of 250-300+ ml are a better choice, and your main challenge is going to be keeping everyone's attention to keep the session moving forward.
There are many different ways you could arrange and set up your gear for a session, but we've found it works well for the host to have direct access to the boiling water and vessels, while each of the guests should have one or more cups (ideally one cup per tea that is currently being brewed, so two concurrent teas means two cups per guest, but it's okay to bend this rule as long as the two teas aren't dramatically different).
Rather than walk around and serve tea to everyone, you can save some effort by filling and passing around a large tea pitcher for each steep. Also, that way guests who are not yet finished with their previous cup don't slow the session down (it gets old reminding everyone to "be sure and finish your tea" with each steep and it's more pleasant for everyone if you don't have to worry about that).
For a truly casual gathering, all you really need to do is pass the tea pitcher around the table with each steep and let the discussion happen naturally. If you'd prefer to focus more directly on the tea, you may want to give a preamble with each new tea, or even each steep, and solicit comments as people try it.
With groups over about 10 people, gongfu becomes less practical for multiple reasons relating to distributing the tea as well as ensuring everyone is paying attention, so you might want to consider splitting into two groups if you've got a lot of attendees.
For larger groups, there is one non-gongfu approach that works particularly well for serving tea. For this style you want a relatively large teapot or gaiwan (250-300 ml or more) and you want each guest to have a small cup around 30-50 ml. Weigh out a gongfu-like ratio of 1 gram per 15 ml of vessel capacity and fill your large pot or gaiwan all the way with hot or boiling water. Now, immediately begin serving guests by pouring directly into their cups first-come-first-serve, but refill your brewing vessel around the halfway mark every time, never allowing it to reach an empty state.
You can refill guests' cups any time they want, and every cup of tea is going to be slightly different. It's easier if they can mill around and you can serve the tea in a stationary location. This convenient approach is very similar to grandpa style in a mug; think of it as grandma style if you will.
A roasted white tea, a white2tea specialty, Charing Cross
Choosing teas
If you're not sure what to serve, we recommend offering your personal favorite teas that you're familiar with, as this will make it easier for you to explain their positive attributes to others if you wish. (Oops, we just gave away white2tea's top secret strategic business plan.)
You can also plan the event around a theme or an educational goal, such as old versus young tea, the different types of tea, levels of oxidation, and so on.
One thing to keep in mind, if you serve two teas concurrently, people will compare them, for better or worse. The comparisons may seem very simplistic and reductive, for example, if you serve a ripe Puer and a raw Puer side-by-side, the most common feedback will very likely be "this one is bitter!" in regards to the raw Puer or “this one is smoother!” in regards to the ripe Puer. This may seem a bit reductive, as the differences between raw and ripe Puer go far deeper than that, but it would be a common response to prepare for.
Plan your session accordingly and don't expect your guests to notice the exact same nuances you do if you're more experienced; instead, design the session to progressively emphasize whatever aspects of tea you want them to focus on. If things are moving more slowly than planned or people aren't "getting" a particular tea, you can always cut that one short and move on to the next one in the queue.
Small batch shou Puer tea, an acquired taste for most new tea drinkers
On letting the tea speak for itself
We like to let the tea speak for itself, but there are some pros and cons here. We believe the less that's said the better, so people can make up their own minds about what they think, but some basic facts are in order, such as "this is a raw Puer, harvested in 2015 and aged for the last 8-9 years." For a novice audience you may want to give additional hints, such as "some highlights to look for are the thick body, balance of bitterness and sweetness in each sip, and strong body feelings." However, if you begin with a leading description most people will likely find it difficult to abandon the initial suggested flavors and experience the tea for themselves.
Tea event etiquette
Probably the most important etiquette to keep in mind for tea events has to do with hygiene. While we aren't particularly worried about cooties, you really don't want to give the appearance of doing things that look gross, and this is true regardless of formality. Think carefully about how you handle the tea itself, guests' cups and other teaware. Don't touch your face, make sure to wash your hands periodically and things of that nature.
You're also welcome to make rules for your event if you'd like, but we think those are probably more of a buzzkill. However, you do want to be able to get everyone's attention to pass around that tea pitcher or announce a new tea, so don't be afraid to assert yourself and talk over people if needed — it's for the sake of the tea.
Oolong tea from Fujian province, an aromatic option for new tea drinkers
Snacks for tea sessions
The benefits of providing snacks are that people will settle down and focus on tea instead of wandering off to look for food, and people with sensitive stomachs will be less likely to be bothered by tannins and other tea compounds.
When you're choosing snacks, avoid salty or greasy foods and strong flavors like spices or seasoning. You want items that are filling, but not too filling, and don't destroy guests' palates. Some proven winners are:
- Dried fruit and nuts
- Mild pastries
- Dark chocolate
- Bland but crunchy crackers or rice cakes
- Fresh fruit
- Any small snack that isn’t overpowering — tea can’t compete with smoked sausage
As a rule of thumb, each individual tea is going to take about twice as long to share with others as it does to drink solo. This means that even if you share multiple concurrent teas and keep it moving briskly, your event could easily take 1-2 hours or longer to session multiple teas. If in doubt, bring snacks; you'll be glad you did.
When Tea Taste is Different than Expectations
All of these adjectives and descriptors above are great and all, but what happens when that’s not how tea tastes to you? Ultimately, you are the judge of your own experience, and while tea tasting notes can be helpful as a rough guide, they are never the final word on how a tea will be for you. Given the subjective nature of taste and the power of poetic descriptions to influence us, it might even be beneficial to taste tea samples blind from time to time, so you have the opportunity to make your own notes before reading descriptions and reviews from other tea drinkers.