What is Tea (Camellia Sinensis)?
Tea, as you popularly know it, or Camellia Sinensis -- the plant credited with beginning a million refreshing mornings. Taste is its character. Aroma its identity. Colour its personality. And flavour its ultimate differentiation.
A tea plant is sensitive to its soil and atmosphere. So much so, that its very flavour and taste could vary within a single estate and from one day to another. Only the discerning sense of a seasoned tea taster can distinguish what are similar looking tea granules to an untrained eye.
Art of Tea Tasting
Tasting is a refined art which encompasses a large number of variables. A taster’s palate and olfactory senses are finely sensitive and highly discriminatory.
An experienced taster can identify the garden, ambient conditions of the plucking day and can even suggest adjustments in the manufacturing process. A taster uses his sharp sense of sight, smell, touch and taste while judging the quality of the tea.
A taster must also have an in-depth knowledge about the prevailing market conditions, consumer preferences and manufacturing techniques while evaluating the tea. These are endowments of birth - it would be true to say that tasters are born and not made. These natural talents, however, have to be trained and developed through long years of practice before the palate is proficient enough to register the minute differences.
Distinguishing between quality of teas is possible by the human palate only - no wonder this craft is viewed with a tinge of awe and wonder. The art of tea tasting is valued much at WaghBakri Group.
The Tasting Procedure
In the tasting procedure, pots and cups made of the finest china, kept spotlessly clean, are used; 2.5 gm of each tea is weighed into pots and water which has just come to the boil is poured over it. The pots are then covered with a lid and the tea is infused for either 5 or 6 minutes, depending on the individual taster’s preference. The liquor is poured out into a cup and the tea is ready for tasting.
The colour and evenness of the infusion, as also its nose, are an index to the intrinsic value of the brew. This examination takes place in a well lit room away from direct sunlight, shade and shadow. Light from the north, which is steady and uniform, is ideal.
The scrutiny of the leaf and infusion over, the taster turns his attention to the liquor and takes a sip from the cup, rolls it in his mouth and spits it out. In that split second, the palate registers the taste - Flavour, Briskness, Strength and any faults and flaws are recorded and the taster is ready with his judgement.
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