the traditional art of
Tea Tasting
Ceylon has taken tea seriously since 1967, when the first tea shrub was planted here. Ceylon tea placed her on the map, and in recent years, tea has supported the Sri Lankan economy and has become an institution in its own right. Planters, tea pluckers, merchants, brokers, auctioneers, packers, distributors, and all those involved in the tea trade adhere to a stringent code of quality norms to guarantee that Ceylon tea retains its place among tea producing nations. As a result, each box of tea is evaluated and rated to justify its right to use the lion’s emblem.
Though Ceylon is a small island, its diversity in tea is acknowledged and sought for by tea lovers and tea connoisseurs. Ceylon tea is the result of an old skill that has been developed through time. Tea is produced by a single species of plant, and it needs a particular intrinsic aptitude to be able to categorize liquors based on one’s senses.
the skills of the
Tea Taster
Tea tasters, like wine tasters, are a highly specialized vocation that takes nearly 5 years of training. It is a skill that can only be acquired by practice, experience, and knowledge. The destiny of the teas is ultimately decided by these experienced tasters. They assess the tea’s quality by taking into account a variety of criteria.
The tea tasters must be able to identify even the most minor differences that an untrained bystander would not recognize. These educated professionals are able to readily pick up the actual essence of the liquors via leaf on leaf, infusion after infusion. Color, scent, touch, and taste are all examples of sensory experiences.
What exactly is
Tea Tasting
The fundamentals of tea tasting are to taste the tea, explain it, and then assign a value to the tea. These are all determined by assessing four basic parameters: Liquor, infused leaf appearance, fragrance, and dry leaf appearance.
The fundamentals of tea are simply: How does it taste? How does it appear? What does it odor like? How does the dried leaf appear?
All of these are simple and basic questions, but the knowledge gained on the job allows a trained taster to identify the elevations at which the tea grew, the exposure the plant had to climatic conditions prior to plucking, the region the tea comes from, hints of different aromas, which clone of Camillia Sinensis the particular brew is from, and the strength of the brew. And this is not a simple process. Because the tea bush is so sensitive to its surroundings, different traits can be seen within a single tea plantation and within a single tea bush. And if the same technique is repeated in the same plantation after a few weeks, the outcomes might be drastically different.
