The role of tea description
Posted: Thu Jun 20, 2019 11:25 pm
A discussion about tea flavor wheels in a Facebook group led to discussing the role of tea description.
That implies "in tasting," and for some specific purpose, but I guess I mean in general, to consider why to describe tea (isolate flavor and other character aspects), versus just not doing that.
Before I get into background and tangents, what do you think, does it help to try to "break down" tea experience by description, or does it go against purely experiencing it without trying to analyze it? Or can both work for different purposes, per what you experience?
That thread on flavor wheels is here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/gongfuc ... 670465795/
Oddly I came out in favor of questioning if it really helps to describe tea, to explicitly try to communicate--or just understand for your own purposes--how a tea tastes, or what mouthfeel and aftertaste aspects are like. Part of that was a natural inclination to play the devil's advocate, but I really do struggle to place what it means, even though I write a lot of detailed tea reviews myself.
The last comment in that discussion probably works as well as any to re-summarize that, although it had moved on to considering if training to identify Asian-oriented flavors is important (Asian vegetables and fruits, floral scents, etc.):
It is hard to narrow down the assumed context, who would probably be using these. People training for a tea sommelier role would, and tea wheels and scent training kits should be useful for that. To clarify, as I'm commenting here it's not directed to people new to exploring tea, or not far through the path, sorting out general types and typical aspects, or even taking the first steps after that, exploring different and better versions.
There would be another broad range of people who are unusually interested in tea, with many years of extensive exposure, and whether or not they are selling tea would not be as important a distinction as it would first seem (in my judgment). That's more or less who I'm referring to, in relation to commenting that these people don't need to be intimately familiar with Asian food ingredients, with the local fruits and vegetables, and spices and flowers.
I also think that describing their experience of tea in relation to that level of break-down isn't important.
Of course that's a judgement call; the opposite opinion also works, that more exposure and analysis would be better, deepening appreciation and understanding of experiences, adding more reference levels for evaluation. It makes for an odd discussion point that someone with a moderate degree of exposure to these two only vaguely related sets of experiences (broad exposure to Asian foods, spices, flowers, etc., and extensive detailed tasting experience) would typically not ever have arrived there without valuing these things earlier on in exposure. Probably most often someone would be trained to value them, along with other levels of tea theme exposure. It would be hard to evaluate what it would be like experiencing teas from both perspectives, as trained in relation to description form and aspect distinction, or not, since someone would typically only have access to one form. Of course I'm only passing on one person's opinion anyway, based on moderate but substantial exposure, and I expect that people trained as tea sommeliers or "masters" wouldn't see the same concerns in the same way.
While I'm making an article of this post, I also mentioned there being an app for recording tea characteristics in a form similar to that presented in tea flavor wheels, and a really, really long blog post I wrote about that general subject, and "machine tasting" in general, which is something else entirely.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... .testggapp
http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.co ... sting.html
That implies "in tasting," and for some specific purpose, but I guess I mean in general, to consider why to describe tea (isolate flavor and other character aspects), versus just not doing that.
Before I get into background and tangents, what do you think, does it help to try to "break down" tea experience by description, or does it go against purely experiencing it without trying to analyze it? Or can both work for different purposes, per what you experience?
That thread on flavor wheels is here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/gongfuc ... 670465795/
Oddly I came out in favor of questioning if it really helps to describe tea, to explicitly try to communicate--or just understand for your own purposes--how a tea tastes, or what mouthfeel and aftertaste aspects are like. Part of that was a natural inclination to play the devil's advocate, but I really do struggle to place what it means, even though I write a lot of detailed tea reviews myself.
The last comment in that discussion probably works as well as any to re-summarize that, although it had moved on to considering if training to identify Asian-oriented flavors is important (Asian vegetables and fruits, floral scents, etc.):
It is hard to narrow down the assumed context, who would probably be using these. People training for a tea sommelier role would, and tea wheels and scent training kits should be useful for that. To clarify, as I'm commenting here it's not directed to people new to exploring tea, or not far through the path, sorting out general types and typical aspects, or even taking the first steps after that, exploring different and better versions.
There would be another broad range of people who are unusually interested in tea, with many years of extensive exposure, and whether or not they are selling tea would not be as important a distinction as it would first seem (in my judgment). That's more or less who I'm referring to, in relation to commenting that these people don't need to be intimately familiar with Asian food ingredients, with the local fruits and vegetables, and spices and flowers.
I also think that describing their experience of tea in relation to that level of break-down isn't important.
Of course that's a judgement call; the opposite opinion also works, that more exposure and analysis would be better, deepening appreciation and understanding of experiences, adding more reference levels for evaluation. It makes for an odd discussion point that someone with a moderate degree of exposure to these two only vaguely related sets of experiences (broad exposure to Asian foods, spices, flowers, etc., and extensive detailed tasting experience) would typically not ever have arrived there without valuing these things earlier on in exposure. Probably most often someone would be trained to value them, along with other levels of tea theme exposure. It would be hard to evaluate what it would be like experiencing teas from both perspectives, as trained in relation to description form and aspect distinction, or not, since someone would typically only have access to one form. Of course I'm only passing on one person's opinion anyway, based on moderate but substantial exposure, and I expect that people trained as tea sommeliers or "masters" wouldn't see the same concerns in the same way.
While I'm making an article of this post, I also mentioned there being an app for recording tea characteristics in a form similar to that presented in tea flavor wheels, and a really, really long blog post I wrote about that general subject, and "machine tasting" in general, which is something else entirely.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... .testggapp
http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.co ... sting.html
