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Tea Tasting
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Most people have seen wine tasters at work and know it is a highly skilled profession. Tea tasting is similar. At a tasting, tea is made from each sample in separate pots and infused according to the taster's requirements.

The liquid tea is poured into a bowl. The taster checks the flavour of the tea by sucking the liquid into his mouth and allowing it to linger there long enough for the flavour to be appreciated. He then spits it out. The infused leaves and the dry leaves are also inspected. The taster assesses the flavour, smell, colour and the uniformity of size of the dry leaves.

Tea Tasting

Like wine, tea has its own vocabulary of tasting terms. Tea can be:
Brisk -a lively taste in the liquor
Pungent - bite and astringency but without bitterness - most desirable
Grey - teas which have a greyish appearance caused by too much abrasion during sorting.
Even - teas true to their particular grade and which compromise particles of leaf which are even in size.
Bright - a good bright colour is an important indicator of quality in a tea.
Body - indication of strength of tea, a lack of body would indicate a weak insipid tea.

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