"Melinda" writes:

[...]
Seriously though, I'm seeing huge differences in people's ability to discern
various taste nuances in tea (if I go by what they say on their tasting
logs). I really do think it's something physical, not just a person not
concentrating or being careless or whatever. After all, not everyone is a
great perfumer for example.

I'm sure we vary in native sensory abilities. But I think what we're
born with is dwarfed by the abilities some of us, at least, develop
through experience. The experience, I think, consists of
concentrating on the taste and, especially, aroma of different teas
and also verbalizing the sensory experience so it's easier to remember
in the future. There was a study published in a respectable
scientific journal showing that, with enough training, humans could
track scents about as well as dogs.

Melinda, who also thinks the term "camphor" is used perhaps too much in
describing sheng puerh.

I completely agree.

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html