How does everyone taste their tea? For the first infusion I will sip
the tea after inhaling a little air and then exhale through my nose
after I swallow the tea. For the next several infusions I let the tea
move around my mouth, mostly to see how it feels. What does everyone
else do? I'm looking to make my technique better, and I'm sure I have
plenty of room for improvement.

When I'm tasting seriously (yeah..haha), I adopt the wine tasting
technique of gurgling the tea while inhaling through my mouth and make
this rude noise. I swirl the liquid around for 10 seconds or more to
evaluate the texture. During swallowing, I concentrate on its texture
going down the throat. After swallowing, my lips are closed, I breathe
through my nose and count the seconds it takes for the residual taste
to dissipate.

If you have attained the level that I have, you will occasionally choke
while gurgling the tea and it comes out the nose. Now, that's really
fun! Your guests/spouse/children will usually be entertained when that
happens.

Phyll


xDustinx wrote:
How does everyone taste their tea? For the first infusion I will sip
the tea after inhaling a little air and then exhale through my nose
after I swallow the tea. For the next several infusions I let the tea
move around my mouth, mostly to see how it feels. What does everyone
else do? I'm looking to make my technique better, and I'm sure I have
plenty of room for improvement.

First, examine and SMELL the leaf before brewing.
This will give you a good start on knowing where
the brewed taste is comming from.

Second, smell the brewed liquor in the cup. This
will further give you a deeper foretaste of what
you are drinking.

Third, sip a good amount of the tea after it has
cooled enough to hold in your mouth. Allow the
tea to hit ALL areas of your tongue as you swish
it around your mouth. Breathe deeply and then
swallow whilst noting the taste as it goes down
your throat.

Aftwards, enjoy the rest of the cup in a more
"normal" mode, but still paying attention to the
taste as it cools. Note the taste remaining on
your tongue as you continue to drink it.

--
H.L.Law

Lawman, do you also smell the empty cup / bottom of gaiwan / the under
lid of gaiwan and smell the wet leaves in your pot/gaiwan, etc.?

Phyll

Lawman wrote:
First, examine and SMELL the leaf before brewing.
This will give you a good start on knowing where
the brewed taste is comming from.

Second, smell the brewed liquor in the cup. This
will further give you a deeper foretaste of what
you are drinking.

Third, sip a good amount of the tea after it has
cooled enough to hold in your mouth. Allow the
tea to hit ALL areas of your tongue as you swish
it around your mouth. Breathe deeply and then
swallow whilst noting the taste as it goes down
your throat.

Aftwards, enjoy the rest of the cup in a more
"normal" mode, but still paying attention to the
taste as it cools. Note the taste remaining on
your tongue as you continue to drink it.

--
H.L.Law

Hola, Dustin,

Hope life's treating you well!

What does everyone else do?

I do the following, more or less. Nothing too rigidly adhered-to, but
usually most of them:

1. Examine and smell the dry leaves.
Get an idea of the oxidation level, and the amount of roasting. Check
out the compression/rolling.

2. Examine the rinse.
Frothy/filthy? Cloudy?

3. Infuse properly, and smell the lid of the pot, then the leaves
themselves.
Relate the scents of the lid to those in the leaves - usually perfumed
vs. pungent/powerful. The lid-scent often changes as more evaporation
takes place; get an idea for the way in which it evolves, and compare
it to your past experiences with tea of that type.

4. Pour into aroma cup (wenxiangbei). Place the tasting cup
(pinmingbei) on top. Invert, so that the soup is in the aroma cup, and
serve. Pulling out the aroma cup ejects the tea, of course - the
initial scent is the "bottom-cup scent" (beidixiang). Often the
intense floral character, if present, may be shown here, evolving into
the mid-scent. As the cup cools (perhaps over ten seconds), the "cold
scent" (lengxiang) takes over. Sometimes more buttery, "brown", or
rich depending on the type of tea.

5. Get tasting.
Like Phyll, I'm unashamedly noisy. Sip with some air to circulate the
flavour, remembering that a large portion of our taste mechanism is
supported by scent. Examine the initial impact on the tongue. Feel
the flavour recede to the back of the mouth, and interact with the
sides of the tongue, the roof of the mouth. This "mid-taste", as I've
found in the past and also noticed on Phyll's blog, is occassionally
missing entirely (Phyll's "doughnut hole"). Examine the "hind-taste"
as you swallow. Try to avoid nasal ejection (painful). The
after-taste can tell you as much about the quality of the leaf as many
other aspects - is it enduring, robust? Most of all... did you enjoy
the tea? Life's too short to cope with mediocre tea.

Describing flavour is a whole vocabulary on its own. I tend to become
inexplicably violent when I read other people using the word
"mouthfeel". Then again, I use more than my share of silly words, so
I'm sure it all evens out in the end.

6. Repeat 3-5 for later infusions.

7. Tip out the leaves into your vessel of choice.
Are the leaves chopped? Are their edges brutally savaged, as often
happens with mechanically-picked leaf? Are they beautifully preserved
in their original state? What're the size and mixture like? Is there
any stem-structure connecting leaves?


Toodlepip,

Hobbes

snip snip snip

I tend to become
inexplicably violent when I read other people using the word
"mouthfeel". Then again, I use more than my share of silly words, so
I'm sure it all evens out in the end.

Guilty. The feel of the tea in the mouth
is part of the tea's pleasure, and when it is
too thin or too thick, it can ruin the overall
experience. This is especially true for old
Sheng Pu'erhs and for well roasted WuYi's.
When the mouthfeel is right, there is an ever
changing flavor coating in the mouth and on
the tongue, especially perhaps at the back of
the throat. This can move from sweet carmel
to wood or bitter/sour notes. You can hardly
speak of Bao Zhong without speaking of its
feel in the mouth. These are solely my own
opinions. I don't mean to imply that others
should feel the same way.

I know what you mean by silly words, though.
Ultimately, all words are silly when it comes to
tea drinking.

How do I drink? I sniff dry leaf, wet leaf,
lid, liquor, empty cup, gaiwan, or pot by
turns and at the right moments as the mood
strikes, and with others whenever these
things are offered to me for inspection. I
drink by slurp and gurgle and slosh in
quiet concentration. Most amazing to me
is how the tea unfolds when I'm focused
on it, and how different the tea drinking
experience is when I'm not. Breathing out
to enjoy the tea's aroma has been mentioned
to me before in other context. I have to
remind myself to do it. It's worth the effort.

I think by the way that that is one of the
best questions that's gotten asked around
here in quite awhile. Praise to the original
poster.

Michael

Ah yes, it's not the concept of how tea feels in the mouth that seems
to send me into a beserker Viking rage, just the word "mouthfeel".
Perhaps "rage" is a bit strong. Maybe it's more of a beserker Viking
niggle. Surely even Vikings had niggles.

I think more is better than less when drinking tea. I brew half liter
pots and drink from open mouth glass cup which fills the nostrils,
sensitizes the tastebuds, coats the throat, and warms the stomach which
is a feedback mechanism to help you taste the tea better. I think the
larger infusion is a more accurate taste profile than the where's the
tea proper zodiac alignment gongfu vessel style of hit and miss. I
think gongfu might be better on an empty stomach but I make a point of
never being hungry as you could tell.

Jim

PS A change in tea taste is a change in health or just getting older
as in my case. I now depend more on psychology than physiology in my
approach to drinking tea. The above sounds physical but it is sense
immersion where the ego ends up just going along for the ride.

xDustinx wrote:
How does everyone taste their tea? For the first infusion I will sip
the tea after inhaling a little air and then exhale through my nose
after I swallow the tea. For the next several infusions I let the tea
move around my mouth, mostly to see how it feels. What does everyone
else do? I'm looking to make my technique better, and I'm sure I have
plenty of room for improvement.

Phyll ---- Yep, guilty too for using the word "mouthfeel" too many
times. I've got to look for its synonym. The tactile sensation in the
mouth (how's that?) is an imporatatn factor to me...


HobbesOxon wrote:
Ah yes, it's not the concept of how tea feels in the mouth that seems
to send me into a beserker Viking rage, just the word "mouthfeel".
Perhaps "rage" is a bit strong. Maybe it's more of a beserker Viking
niggle. Surely even Vikings had niggles.

imporatatn is the origin of the word "important", in case you didn't
know.

Phyll wrote:
Phyll ---- Yep, guilty too for using the word "mouthfeel" too many
times. I've got to look for its synonym. The tactile sensation in the
mouth (how's that?) is an imporatatn factor to me...


HobbesOxon wrote:
Ah yes, it's not the concept of how tea feels in the mouth that seems
to send me into a beserker Viking rage, just the word "mouthfeel".
Perhaps "rage" is a bit strong. Maybe it's more of a beserker Viking
niggle. Surely even Vikings had niggles.

xDustinx wrote:
How does everyone taste their tea? For the first infusion I will sip
the tea after inhaling a little air and then exhale through my nose
after I swallow the tea. For the next several infusions I let the tea
move around my mouth, mostly to see how it feels. What does everyone
else do? I'm looking to make my technique better, and I'm sure I have
plenty of room for improvement.

I think the responses here pretty much sum it up, but the only real
difference for me that seems to be neglected in a lot of posts is that
I spend as much time after I've swallowed to enjoy the aftertaste and
any extra or different flavors that come through after the fact. A lot
of times this is where you can pinpoint subtle flavors lost in the
initial tasting. Often I find I can detect a hint of something from
smelling the lid or the leaves as they brew, and the place I finally
put my finger on it is in this aftertaste stage.

I smell the leaves dry, enjoy the aroma while it brews, smell the
actual liquor once brewed, sip it in and move it around to cover the
tounge, swallow, breathe and then pay attention to the aftertaste, then
once "warmed up" I will again smell the liquor and then just enjoy the
rest of the cup/pot.

- Dominic

Roy Fong at ITC is a stickler for how a tea feels in the mouth; he has
at times espoused a technique involving sipping the tea, holding it in
the front of the mouth and using the tongue to determine how thick or
silky the tea tastes before swallowing it. Since I became aware of this
I've really changed how I judge puerh teas. The really good ones
sometimes have a very subtle taste but great mouthfeel, although one
would hope they would have both.

I'm really digging YSLLCs '97 Xia Guan cooked cake right now, btw.

Michael Plant wrote:
snip snip snip

I tend to become
inexplicably violent when I read other people using the word
"mouthfeel". Then again, I use more than my share of silly words, so
I'm sure it all evens out in the end.

Guilty. The feel of the tea in the mouth
is part of the tea's pleasure, and when it is
too thin or too thick, it can ruin the overall
experience. This is especially true for old
Sheng Pu'erhs and for well roasted WuYi's.
When the mouthfeel is right, there is an ever
changing flavor coating in the mouth and on
the tongue, especially perhaps at the back of
the throat. This can move from sweet carmel
to wood or bitter/sour notes. You can hardly
speak of Bao Zhong without speaking of its
feel in the mouth. These are solely my own
opinions. I don't mean to imply that others
should feel the same way.

I know what you mean by silly words, though.
Ultimately, all words are silly when it comes to
tea drinking.

How do I drink? I sniff dry leaf, wet leaf,
lid, liquor, empty cup, gaiwan, or pot by
turns and at the right moments as the mood
strikes, and with others whenever these
things are offered to me for inspection. I
drink by slurp and gurgle and slosh in
quiet concentration. Most amazing to me
is how the tea unfolds when I'm focused
on it, and how different the tea drinking
experience is when I'm not. Breathing out
to enjoy the tea's aroma has been mentioned
to me before in other context. I have to
remind myself to do it. It's worth the effort.

I think by the way that that is one of the
best questions that's gotten asked around
here in quite awhile. Praise to the original
poster.

Michael

11/7/06


Ah yes, it's not the concept of how tea feels in the mouth that seems
to send me into a beserker Viking rage, just the word "mouthfeel".
Perhaps "rage" is a bit strong. Maybe it's more of a beserker Viking
niggle. Surely even Vikings had niggles.

Yes, I understood. Actually, I'm not fond of
buzz words either, especial those commonly
applied to tea. We're on the same page. Still
guilty, though.

Anybody here know how far the finger tap
on the table to signify "thank you" extends
into other areas of Chinese culture? That
is, is this signal commonly used in other
context beyond tea? Just curious?

Michael

11/7/06


Phyll ---- Yep, guilty too for using the word "mouthfeel" too many
times. I've got to look for its synonym. The tactile sensation in the
mouth (how's that?) is an imporatatn factor to me...


Or we could just be more specific about
what we mean, since different teas present
differently in this regard.

I'm drinking a Bai Ji Guan this morning
that's full of flavor and a warm
sweet complex finish of wood-flower.
The finish comes up only after the tea
is well down the throat, comes up as
a floral-fruit friendly essence, and then
changes going toward something just
hinting of metal. This *might* be a
sense of the feeling called "mouthfeel,"
but I usually use that word to describe
a thickness in the liquor that carries
the flavors throughout the mouth just
right somehow. Anyway, buzz buzz.

Michael (equally guilty)

Michael Plant wrote:
11/7/06


Ah yes, it's not the concept of how tea feels in the mouth that seems
to send me into a beserker Viking rage, just the word "mouthfeel".
Perhaps "rage" is a bit strong. Maybe it's more of a beserker Viking
niggle. Surely even Vikings had niggles.

Yes, I understood. Actually, I'm not fond of
buzz words either, especial those commonly
applied to tea. We're on the same page. Still
guilty, though.

Anybody here know how far the finger tap
on the table to signify "thank you" extends
into other areas of Chinese culture? That
is, is this signal commonly used in other
context beyond tea? Just curious?

Michael

One example - if someone lights your cigarette, you tap their hand
twice. I always thought that was really classy. Otherwise I think
just for tea and alcohol.

As for the term 'mouthfeel', I always assumed that it came from the
Chinese term 'kougan', but I learned here
http://www.wordspy.com/words/mouthfeel.asp that it appeared in the NYT
in 1973 - probably too early to have been introduced by tea nerds.

Alex
Nasty cold, home from work, haven't decided what to drink yet