Category: Drinks

Part of the Tea 101 course with the Academy of Tea, Canada, was the tea tasting portion. It’s hard to describe the flavour and aroma of a tea with a vocabulary. All teas taste the same, almost, unless they are very distinct. But even then, the words aren’t always there to describe the taste. This tea tasting wheel was mentioned during the course and it’s great. It gives a words to all those flavours your’re tasting and if not, then at least it gets you thinking along the lines of the flavours you’re tasting. Sweet just is sweet until you are reminded of the flavour of candy, burnt sugar, molasses, caramel, malty candies and more. Now you start thinking about caramelized sugars, and onions and more. You’d never think of smokey as a taste until it’s brought to your attention then you think of bbq’s, the ashy taste you get from a burnt bbq’d marshmallow. This wheel is great a tool when starting out on tea tasting.

The tea grading system is very inconsistent and not used in every country the produces tea. The criteria for grading tea is by the dry leaf, not taste or anything intuitive like that. Tea is divided into two categories, broken leaf grades and leaf grades. For example, when there is a “B” associated with a tea it is referring to the tea leaves and in this case means that smaller pieces of leaves are used. This means that there is a greater surface area of leaf to water implying a stronger brewed tea.

One idea of how tea began was through Emperor Shen Nong in 2737BC. Apparently, he was boiling water; there was a breeze; it blew a few leaves into his pot of boiling water; the leaves brewed; a coloured liquor with a fragrant aroma formed. He tasted it. Like it. Tea was born. The tree the leaves came from were the first wild tea plant.

The white tea is the rarest and most exotic tea. It comes from the finest and youngest shoots of the Camellia sinensis plant. It is handpicked at the beginning of the season and the leaves or shoots used to brew this tea are very fine, silvery haired, almost fuzzy. The origin of this tea is from the Fujian province in China but can also be found from Sri Lanka, Kenya and the Darjeeling region of India. The leaves, once picked, are sun dried, gently steamed, oven dried at a low temperature of about 40C to remove all the water content and prevent oxidation. The flavour of the white tea is smooth, light and peachy, almost buttery with a slight sweetness. More can be found on White tea in a previous post.

Pu’erh teas are aged or fermented teas.

Darjeeling tea is tea from this district in West Bengal India called the Darjeeling district. This area is in the Himalayas. It’s tea grown here. The soil and climate is such that the teas created here have an taste that gives it the distinction of being referred to as the “champagne of teas”. The flavour of Darjeeling teas go well with custard, eggs, grilled fish, curries and fresh fruit. So pretty much everything! There are 87 tea gardens, as they are called, places that grow tea in this area. These tea estates cover over 17500hectares of land and produce over 9 million kilograms of tea per year and employ over 50 percent of the people in this Darjeeling district.