Tea Terms N to Z: From Notes and Orthodox to Tippy and Woody

N

• Neat: good leaf of even appearance.
• Neutral: a liquor with no pronounced character, useful as a filler in blends.
• New: a tea that has not had time to mellow: thin, and sometimes with a rubbery note that fades as it keeps.
• New season: the character of north Indian teas from the first flushes of the year.
• Nilgiri: the “Blue Mountains” of south India, which grow bright, fragrant teas year round. See Nilgiri tea.
• Noon chai: Kashmir’s salted pink milk tea, also called sheer chai. See Kashmiri pink chai.
• Nose: the smell of the dry leaf, the infused leaf or the liquor.
• Notes: tea parlance for flavors, as in “notes of rose and jasmine.” Tasters speak of top notes, a heart and a base. Our deck groups notes into eight families: fruity, floral, vegetal, spicy, nutty, earthy, woody and smoky.
• Nutty: a pleasant note like cobnuts in some Assam teas, most often in the second flush.

O

• OC or OOC (out of condition): the trade’s shorthand for tea spoiled mainly by mold.
• Old: tea that has lost through age the qualities it once had.
• Oolong: a partly oxidized tea, between green and black, first made in China. See What is oolong tea? Depending on the style, an oolong is oxidized anywhere from about 10% to 80%; lightly oxidized ones taste closer to green tea, and those above about 50% closer to black.
• Open: whole leaf that is loosely rolled and untwisted.
• Orange Pekoe (OP): a whole-leaf black tea grade. The name has nothing to do with oranges or orange flavor. In our deck’s grade ladder, OP is “slightly shorter and less wiry than FOP,” with bolder leaves and some twist.
• Orthodox: the traditional way of making tea, rolling the leaf gently to keep it whole or in large pieces. Nearly all Darjeeling tea is orthodox. The leaf is withered, rolled, oxidized and fired before it is sorted, and the method can give many grades. Our deck calls it the method that “preserves the singular virtues of tea leaves,” and the only way tea was made at first.
• Oxidation: the natural browning of leaf once its cells are broken, which turns green leaf into black tea. Often wrongly called fermentation. See How tea is made. How long the leaf is left to oxidize decides what kind of tea it becomes.

P

• Pale tip: tips paler than golden tips, often from too little withering.
• Papery: a fault from tea kept too long in contact with paper.
• Peachy: a fine, delicate peach aroma, found now and then in fine Darjeelings.
• Pekoe: on the bush, the second leaf below the bud (the first is the orange pekoe, the bud the flowery pekoe); in grading, a word for leaf of a certain size and style, as in Flowery Orange Pekoe (FOP).
• Pink and rosy: liquor colors. Pink is brighter and more delicate than a deep colory cup; rosy, pink with a redder tint, is “a most desirable characteristic.”
• Plain: a clean, harmless tea that lacks body and character.
• Plucking: picking the leaf. Fine teas use the tender shoot: “two leaves and a bud.” Only the leaves and young buds are harvested to make tea.
• Point (pointy): a most desirable briskness or acidity in some liquors.
• Pre-autumnal: the first hint of autumn flavor in early autumn teas.
• Pruning: cutting back the bushes, mostly in the winter rest from about December to February in Darjeeling and Assam.
• Pungent: a liquor with great briskness and an astringent effect on the palate, but no bitterness. The trade calls it “a most desirable cup character.”

R

• Rains (rainy): the trade’s word for north Indian tea made in the monsoon, often paired with thin, weedy or plain.
• Raw: a liquor that tastes immature.
• Red or reddish: of a liquor, a desirable color; of dry leaf, a look common in CTC teas that some buyers want and others do not.
• Rich: a mellow liquor full of quality and thickness.
• Robust: a tea that fills the mouth: a thick, vibrant cup with pronounced flavors.
• Rolling: twisting and pressing withered leaf to break its cells, shape it and start oxidation. Rolling releases the leaf’s enzymes and essential oils and exposes them to the air.
• Rotorvane: a rolling machine used with CTC or orthodox rollers that “minces” the leaf.
• Round: a full liquor with a certain smoothness.
• Russian Caravan: a smoky black tea blend named after the camel caravans that once carried tea from China to Russia. See Russian Caravan tea.

Teas, seasons and making

• Scented tea: tea that has taken on the aroma of flowers or spices, such as jasmine green tea.
• Second flush: the summer harvest, late May into June in Darjeeling and into July in Assam. Fuller and fruitier than spring in Darjeeling, maltiest in Assam. See First flush vs second flush.
• Self-drinking: a straight tea good enough to drink on its own, with no need for blending. Our deck uses it for Darjeeling autumn teas, and Frank Miller called a Gopaldhara autumn clonal a “self-drinker” with “superior, stand-alone qualities.”
• Silver tips: downy buds that stay silvery after processing, as in Darjeeling spring teas and white teas. In black tea, the trade ranks silver tips below golden tips.
• Single estate: tea from one named estate, not a blend. We sell ours under the estate’s name with its invoice number, after our tasters pick the best lots.
• Sorting: sieving finished tea into grades by leaf size. Lots of similar size and color are then given a grade, though, as our deck puts it, grading does not decide quality: “The best measure of quality is how the final tea tastes.”
• Steeping: soaking leaf in hot water to brew it. Time and temperature change the cup more than anything else.

Tasting and leaf words

• Scorched: a liquor from leaf fired at too high a temperature.
• Shotty: well-made, very tightly rolled leaf.
• Silky: a smooth, mellow cup, “reminding one of the smoothness of silk.” Of dry leaf, the trade uses it for green tea and for very tippy black teas.
• Smoky: two senses. In a smoky blend, the point of the tea; in the trade, a taste caused by a fault in the dryer. Our deck lists smoke under its empyreal family of aromas.
• Smooth: a rounded, easy cup with no rough edges.
• Soft: a gentle, mild tea low in briskness. A compliment or a criticism, depending on the tea. To the trade it is mainly a criticism, the opposite of brisk.
• Sour: a most undesirable taste, like sour milk or rotten fruit.
• Spicy: a character like cinnamon or cloves, sometimes, though not always, from contamination.
• Stale: an old character in tea stored too long or in damp conditions, sometimes from tea packed with too much moisture.
• Stewed: an unpleasant taste in poorly made teas.
• Strength: the substance in the cup, the feel on the palate. Desirable, but not essential in some flavory teas.
• Stylish: well-made leaf of superior look, usually but not always with tips.
• Sulfurous: a desirable sharp character in some first flush teas from Darjeeling and the Dooars.
• Supple: a liquor in which mellowness outweighs astringency; easy-flowing on the palate.
• Sweet: two senses. In our deck, a desirable and rare quality found at times in light oolongs and green teas; in the trade, a plain, low-grade tea with nothing unpleasant about it.

T

• Taint: any taste or smell foreign to tea, such as diesel or paint, from contamination or weeds in the leaf.
• Tannins: the polyphenols that give tea its color and its astringent grip. See Antioxidants and tannins in tea.
• Tarry: a smoky aroma from overfiring or a fault in the drying.
• Tasting cup: the white porcelain cup and lidded brewing mug tasters use, so every sample is brewed and judged the same way. The brewing cup holds 150 cc, and everything is white so the color and clarity of the liquor show clearly. The usual sample is 2.5 g of leaf, a weight set by British law in 1883, steeped for 5 minutes. See Is Tea-Tasting Only for Experts?
• Thick: a tea with plenty of substance and color. It does not mean the liquid is literally thicker. The trade says it shows body, but not necessarily strength.
• Thin: lacking body, the opposite of thick; a criticism except in some flavory teas.
• Tinny: a taint from an unseasoned sample tin.
• Tip: the unopened bud at the end of a tea shoot.
• Tippy: a tea with plenty of white or golden tips, usually a sign of quality. The T in TGFOP stands for it. Our deck calls tips a characteristic of high-quality orthodox teas.
• Tired: a tea gone a little flat with age, past its best.
• Tulsi: holy basil, brewed as a caffeine-free herbal tea or added to chai. See Tulsi tea.

U and V

• Uneven: leaf of irregular sizes, a sign of poor sorting; or infused leaf of mixed colors.
• Useful: a buyer’s word for a tea with good blending qualities but nothing outstanding.
• Vegetal: a green taste typical of green tea: grassy, herby, leafy or marine.

• Weathery: a leathery taste sometimes found in monsoon teas.
• Weedy: a thin, cabbage-like liquor.
• Well-made: leaf even in color, size and texture. The trade warns it does not necessarily mean a good tea.
• Well-twisted: leaf that has been tightly rolled, a sign of good withering and careful making. It is one of the first things our team checks.
• White tea: the least processed tea, made from young buds and leaves that are simply withered and dried. See What is white tea? Its liquor runs from champagne to light gold.
• Wild and winey: trade faults in autumn teas past their prime; winey suggests poor wine. Our Darjeeling Himalayan Wine takes the word in its other sense, for a rich, high-fired summer tea.
• Winter flush (frost tea): tea picked in the cold, dry months, late December to March, best known from the Nilgiris. See Winter and frost teas from the Nilgiris and our story The Beginner’s Guide to Winter Flush Teas from the Nilgiris.
• Wiry: very well-twisted, thin whole leaf.
• Withering: the first step in making most teas, when fresh leaf is spread on troughs to lose moisture and turn soft. Withering makes the leaf supple enough to roll without crumbling.
• Woody: a note like freshly cut timber, common in autumn teas. In the trade, a sawdust-like fault in teas made very late in the autumn.

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