Ultimate Guide to Tea Tasting Notes

Tasting notes are often used to describe the flavor of a tea. Much like wine, specialty tea has its own tasting terminology. Becoming familiar with these terms will give you a better understanding of what you like when buying tea.

You don’t need to be a tea sommelier to understand the most common tasting notes used to describe tea. Knowing this terminology will help you become a more satisfied tea consumer as you can better select a tea that suits your palate.

Appreciating this will also help you share your passion for tea when describing a specific tea to your friends. Nothing replaces an actual tasting, but many of us buy tea online and this will help decipher the tea vendor’s descriptions.

Three main areas of tasting notes

The tea leaves, the tea liquor, and the tea flavor are all usually included in the tea tasting notes.

1. Tea leaf

How do the leaves look? Lots of white tips from the buds and a brilliant color can be an indication of quality while dull greyish leaves can be an indication of poor quality or storage. Some terms you may see to describe the tea leaves are as follows:

Broken: Leaves have been broken into smaller fragments during rolling.

Leafy or Full-Leaf: Teas that have large, open leaves.

Needles: Teas that are either just the leaf bud or young, opened leaves which have been tightly rolled or cut into the needle-like shape.

Pearls or Pellets: Teas that have been rolled into round balls.

Steamed: Teas that have been steamed. Most often these are Japanese Green teas.

Tippy:  Teas that have unopened buds or Pekoe tip.

Wiry: Teas that have long, thin, tightly rolled leaves.

2. Tea Liquor

The liquid that results from brewing tea is called the liquor. The potential colors range from pale yellow to amber to deep red. There is no right or wrong here. Tea produces quite an array of beautiful colors.

You're looking for clarity here. The only time tea clouding is not an indication of poor quality tea is when hot tea is cooled too quickly when making iced tea, as in refrigerating hot tea. And even then clouding is not desirable but it doesn't mean the tea is bad.

I love all the amazing colors of different tea liquors, don't you?