Exploring the Art of Tea Tasting: How to Develop Your Palate

Exploring the Art of Tea Tasting: How to Develop Your Palate

Tea is considered to be the most popular beverage around the world and a lot of things are involved before a packet of fresh tea reaches the store. Everyone likes to enjoy healthy tea in their own style and preferences. It's uniqueness also comes due to how it is grown and processed.

Tea tasting is one of the important parts of producing a unique herbal blend of tea. It is done to assess the quality of a specific tea in order to help achieve the goals of producing the finest tea. It is considered as art in which the healthy tea taster tells the various ways to brew the tea in order to achieve a particular taste.

What is surping?

Tea surping is generally done to assess the flavor profile of premium tea. When someone surps tea, they make a distinct sound due to rapid inhalation through their mouth, making the slurping sound. Surping helps air to get mixed with the tea, releasing the aromatic compounds from it. Surping distributes the tea across the palate, helping it to come into contact with the taste buds for a better taste perception.

Surping the tea also helps to lower the temperature before it reaches the palate helping it to detect subtle flavors. It can enhance the sensory experience of tasting the tea and thereby we get a better understanding of the various characteristics of tea such as it's sweetness,bitterness etc.

What is the body of tea?

Tasting tea has three parts- sipping, swirling and spitting, similar to wine tasting.But in order to tasting tea in a finne way, one has to swallow the entire tea to compare the difference experienced at the throat. The body of the healthy tea generally refers to the mass and and feel of the tea in one's mouth. Some words which can be used to describe the body of the tea are light, viscous, thick, round and full. The last ones implies good quality tea which has a prominent color , strength and substance.

Types of aromas

Tea aromas are one of the most critical aspect of tea quality which can either make a tea accepted or rejected even before it is tasted.The aroma of the tea can be as surprising and unique as the taste of the tea and can be categorized into many different types. For example, Assam Tea is associated with a strong malty aroma while Darjeeling tea comes with a delicate and soft floral aroma.

In the case of tea, there are many aromas associated with it. Aromas can be categorized into many types such as vegetal, fruity, floral, marine, spicy, woody, buttery milk and so on. To describe the aroma of any tea, we have to make a note about its general characteristics. Does the tea smell delicate or strong? Floral, earthy or roasted? Jot this down before taking your first sip.

Types of flavors

Determining the flavor of the premium tea is one of the important step which we all look forward to in the context of tea tasting. In order to have the best experience in determining the flavor of the tea, it is best to slurp the healthy tea so as to spread it over the entire palate.

As the best quality of tea covers the tongue, it reaches the different parts of the flavor receptors inside it. Flavor can be felt properly if the tea is not too hot. Flavors can be sometimes fleeting and hard to determine, so we have to make sure that it lingers on our tongue for a longer period of time. A collection of flavors are added such as chamomile, lavender and Jasmine to enhance the taste of the fresh tea being enjoyed. It is generally seen that black teas and green teas are used as base teas and different flavors are added to it via solid or liquid form.

Conclusion

To conclude, tea tasting is a beautiful experience to enjoy the different flavors and aromas of the tea. Taking the time to enjoy and admire this art of fresh tea tasting is now needed in our hectic lives. We don't have to be a tea expert in order to enjoy tea, but it is always fun to take a shot at tea tasting.

It is also better if you can take a tasting journal. When we make a tasting journal, we put sensory perception into words.

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