How to Taste Tea Like a Sommelier: A Tasting Notes Guide

Most people don't taste tea. They drink it. The difference is roughly the same as the difference between hearing music and listening to it — and the framework for crossing the gap is straightforward enough that you can pick it up in an afternoon.

**Step 1: The dry leaf.** Before any water touches the tea, smell it. A green tea should smell vegetal and clean; a roasted oolong, of toast and stone fruit; a black tea, of malt or dried flowers. If the dry leaf smells musty, dusty, or stale, no amount of careful brewing will save it. Trust the dry leaf.

**Step 2: The wet leaf.** After the first short steep, lift the lid and smell the wet leaf in the pot. This is when most of a tea's volatile aromatics actually appear. A good Darjeeling first flush will smell of cold flowers; a good gyokuro of warm seaweed and corn silk; a Wuyi rock oolong of mineral and dark caramel. The wet leaf is the most honest indicator of quality.

**Step 3: The first sip — texture.** Most beginners taste with their tongue. Trained tasters taste with their whole mouth. Take a small sip and let it sit on the tongue for a beat before swallowing. Pay attention to the *texture*: is it thin and watery, or does it have a creamy weight? Does it coat the tongue or wash off it? Texture (called *body* or *mouthfeel*) is one of the clearest markers of a well-made tea.

**Step 4: The finish.** Swallow, and pay attention to what's left behind. Cheap tea has a short, often slightly bitter finish that disappears in seconds. A great tea leaves a sweet, lingering aftertaste — *huigan*, in Chinese — that you can still taste two or three minutes later. The longer the finish, the better the tea.

**Keep notes.** A small notebook for tasting will accelerate your learning more than any amount of reading. For each tea, jot: dry-leaf smell, wet-leaf smell, body, dominant flavour notes, finish length, brewing parameters. Within twenty teas you will start recognising patterns. Within a hundred, you will be a serious taster.

Do this with three teas in a row, side by side. You'll know more about tea after one afternoon of structured tasting than most people learn in a lifetime of casual drinking.