Tea - Taste and the Senses

Tasting tea is more than drinking, poets would say it's a form of listening, seeing, smelling, and feeling. As if enjoying tea can be both a guide and an invitation to mindful presence. To taste tea deeply is to awaken the senses, not to judge, but to receive. Like listening to a piece of music, or observing a painting, tea reveals itself in layers. Just as always in perceiving art, we can move beyond "like" or "dislike" into perception, presence, and poetry.

For instance, to enjoy art not everyone of us need to be an artist - there are some artists and the rest of us... the world. Artists invite us to "consume" their art, to enjoy their creations, writers and poets invite us to read their books, and we do so, we read their stories, we enjoy their poetry, we go to their exhibitions etc. etc. The same can be said about tasting tea. We need not be professional tasters to engage in this practice. Like enjoying art, tea tasting invites everyone - the connoisseur and the curious alike - to move through these stages with simple curiosity. We notice appearance, aroma, flavor, and at the end we have our mouthfeel, we need nothing else cause we are "experts" of our taste, we need only curiosity.

It sounds funny but the ceremony of drinking tea makes us use eyes first, as if we engage in the "visual poetry" of drinking. Before water meets leaf, we look. With dry leaves we notice shape - tightly rolled pearls, wiry twists, broad flat leaves, or compacted cakes. We observe color, jade green, charcoal black, silver-tipped, earthy brown. With wet leaves, after steeping, as if unfurled leaves tell their origin and craft. As if we're curious are they whole, torn, vibrant green, or coppery. Their resurrection in water is a story in itself.

Then our attention goes to liquor, we hold our cup to the light, is it pale gold, emerald haze, amber glow, or deep ruby. Clarity, brightness, and color can shift with each infusion.

Or before anything, the fragrance can become for us an invisible introduction, we may smell the dry leaves, always wondering how it feels, grassy, floral, roasty, earthy. We may smell the steeped tea, we inhale deeply, from the cup, but also from the brewed leaves in the pot (the spent leaves often hold the truest scent).
We know aromas may range from high notes like floral (jasmin, orchid), fresh (cut grass, citrus zest), to middle notes like fruity (apricot, lychee), sweet (honey, caramel), and also to base notes like woody, mineral, earthy, roasted etc.

We may close our eyes, what does it evoke? A damp forest after rain? A sun-warmed field? An old wooden bookshelf? We go on to explore the taste, the flavors on the palate. We may sip, we're about to enjoy the first sip - but we don't swallow just yet. We let the tea roll across our tongue, where different zones detect sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami. We get our first impression, the immediate taste - floral, vegetal, malty?

Then we're curious about the development of the taste, we may think how the flavor evolves, from brisk to sweet, from light to deep. So we move on by finishing the aftertaste, we're still evaluating does it linger pleasantly (huigan - returning sweetness), or vanish quickly? Depending on our preferences, but we know bitterness isn't necessarily bad - in moderation, it provides structure. Astringency (that dry, puckering feel) comes from tannins and can be part of tea's texture.

And then thus our mouthfeel is the real body of the tea, mouthfeel is where tea becomes tactile. We evaluate the tea's body, is it light (like spring water), medium (like whole milk), or full (like cream)? We evaluate the texture, is it smooth, velvety, crisp, or rough? We evaluate the afterglow, does our mouth feel refreshed, dry, coated, or cleansed? For instance, they say some teas, like fine oolong or aged pu-erh, offer a coveted qi - a warming, energizing sensation that spreads through the body, a sign of vibrancy and life energy in the leaf.

We even may go further by conducting a simple tasting exercise, by comparing two, three or more teas. We're not deciding which is "better", we're learning their language, tea's tasteful language. We can choose two different teas, perhaps a green and a black. We can brew them side by side, following their ideal temperatures and times. And then we engage each our sense deliberately, by looking at their differing liquors, by smelling their contrasting aromas, by siping alternately, noticing how each feels on the tongue, and by evaluating the aftertaste of each tea.

We may go as far as pairing tea with food, as if that extreme step represents a gentle harmony. Because, just like wine, tea too can elevate a meal. Experts say green tea with lightly steamed vegetables or sushi, cleanses the palate. Oolong with roasted nuts or subtly sweet pastries, complements without overpowering. Black tea with chocolate, spices, or savory breads, stands up to robust flavors. Pu-erh after a rich meal, aids digestion and offers earthy grounding.

We also can go beyond the flavor of tea, we can experience tasting of tea as meditation. For example, in Chinese tea culture, tasting is called pin ming, which stands for appreciating the life of the tea. In Japan, it's about ichigo ichie - "one time, one meeting", treasuring the unrepeatable moment.

When we taste tea mindfully, we're not just consuming a beverage. For sure we're honoring the leaf's origin, the maker's craft, the water's purity, and our own presence. We become part of the tea's story, and it becomes part of our story. A good tea is always a timeless story, a good story has no expiration date. Our taste and our explorations become our personal tea journal.

Many of the tea lovers even keep simple notes, not as criticism of tea's taste, but as remembrance. The write down the tea's name, origin, date. They try to describe appearance, aroma, taste, mouthfeel, how it made them feel, calm, uplifted, nostalgic, centered. They claim, over time, not only they refine their palate, they create a sensory diary of quiet moments, each tied to a cup. Their notes are meant to be both a guide and an invitation, to slow down, to sense more deeply, to meet each cup as if for the first time.

  Sky Division & Logios