Tea Glossary: An A to Z of Tea Terminology and Words to Describe Tea

Tea has two vocabularies. The first describes the tea itself: its type, region, season, grade and how it was made. The second is the language of tasting, the tea tasting terms professionals use to describe the dry leaf, the brewed liquor and the infused leaf.

That second vocabulary exists for a practical reason. When a Paris-based perfumer and tea expert, Carine Baudry, ran a two-day sensory workshop for our buyers, blenders and marketers in Siliguri, she put it simply: “To talk about tea we need a common language so we can share and communicate each other’s experiences better.” Over those two days the team smelled more than 40 aromas from glass vials and tasted over 30 teas, from Darjeeling first flush to Japanese sencha.

Where our definitions come from

In February 2016 our quality team wrote down the words we use at the tasting bench in a glossary of tea terms, because, in its own words, the trade’s many terms and “the variations that exist in regard to some of their definition” called for “a degree of uniformity.” It follows India’s national glossary of tea terms, IS 4541, and groups the words by taste, dry leaf, aroma, color, buyer’s notes and general terms. Our 2023 training deck, used to teach new staff, adds the words we use in tasting notes today. Most definitions on these pages come from those two documents, in plain English.

The words matter because they can mislead. Customers sometimes write to us asking whether a tea named for a fruit contains that fruit, or whether “liquor” means there is alcohol in the cup. In tasting notes, a fruit or flower names a flavor the leaf itself gives, and liquor simply means brewed tea.

Some tasting words sound odd at first (who wants a “baggy” tea?), but each one points to something you can learn to spot. If you want to put them to work, start with How to taste tea like an expert; for the plant behind every word, see What is tea?; for quick answers to everyday questions, see Tea FAQs.

When our tasters assess a sample at the source, they check the dry leaf for bloom and aroma, the wet leaf for color and aroma, and the liquor for color, aroma, astringency, strength, flavor, bitterness, body and aftertaste. Our training deck teaches the same order. Good dry leaf should feel crunchy between your fingers, which shows it has not taken up moisture from the air, and it should smell fresh, never musty. With the infused leaf, the brighter it looks, the better the tea usually is.

Dry leaf

Infused leaf

Smell does most of the work. Up to 90% of flavor is perceived through smell, which is why tasters slurp: “The louder the slurp, the better,” the deck says, because pulling air in with the liquor brings the flavors to life. Frank Miller, a tea buyer since 1990 who wrote for our blog, adds a warning every taster learns: “Never attempt to taste tea when you have a cold!”

When the tea is in your mouth, the deck asks you to check six things: body (light, medium or full), astringency (low to high), pungency, texture (creamy or velvety), how complex the flavors are, and how long they last (short, medium or long). Every one of those words has an entry in the A to Z.

These are the families and examples our training deck uses. A tasting note is built from them, from the first impression through the “heart” of the cup to the finish.

Here is how those words sound in practice. In June 2021 our tasting team spent 55 minutes agreeing on the note for Castleton Spring Chinary Black. The final word went to Arun Kumar Gomden, the veteran Darjeeling tea maker and master taster credited with naming the muscatel teas at Castleton:

“A medium-bodied, well-balanced cup tipped with vibrant green attributes. It starts with clean notes of citrus which however subside to reveal a heart resounding with sweet green flavors which dominate throughout the length of the cup.”

Three of our tasters had each drafted a note first, and they disagreed about one thing: whether the roasted chestnut in the cup was subtle or heavy. Mr. Gomden kept it as a “subtle sensation of roasted chestnuts,” with ripe stone fruit around the edges, a woody undercurrent toward the finish and “furtive notes of elderberry” in the aftertaste.

Medium-bodied, clean, notes, heart: every one of those words is defined in the A to Z. Tasters also score what they taste. For a 2022 Singbulli oolong, our tasters gave scores of 9 and 9.5 and Mr. Gomden ranged from 8.95 to 9.25. On Frank Miller’s own 1 to 10 scale, 5 means “This is tea, not coffee!” and he would buy a chest of any tea he gave a 9.

Our quality team’s glossary follows the trade standard, and our training deck and product notes follow how tea drinkers talk. Where the two differ, the entry in the A to Z gives both senses. The ones to know:

• Woody: praise in a tasting note (“evocative of freshly cut timber”), but in the trade a sawdust-like taste in tea made very late in the autumn.
• Sweet: praise and a rare quality in some light green teas and oolongs, but in the trade a plain, low-grade tea with nothing wrong and nothing special.
• Smoky: the whole point of a smoky blend, but in the trade a taste caused by a fault in the dryer.
• Earthy: a forest-floor note in the flavor wheel, but in the trade a sign of tea stored in poor conditions.
• Fully fired and high fired: faults in most teas, but an asset in certain Darjeelings.
• Thin and light: faults in a strong Assam, but acceptable in some delicate, flavory teas.

Our own teas show the reader’s sense. Teabox Roasted Darjeeling Black opens with “pronounced notes of burnt wood” and smoke, and Darjeeling Himalayan Wine is a “heady high-fired tea” with tobacco and cocoa. Despite its name, Himalayan Wine is pure tea: the trade’s “winey” is a fault, while the name describes the character of the cup.