Hello everyone,
I'm Andy, a tea enthusiast.
“How do you learn to drink tea?”
This is one of the most common questions among beginners.
Today, I’d like to share how I personally learned to appreciate tea and how one can gradually become a tea expert.
What Is Good Tea?
“Good tea” is actually a subjective experience. There isn’t a universal standard.
If a cup of tea makes you feel comfortable and relaxed, that’s good tea.
From a more objective perspective, good tea can be divided into two categories:
- Tea appreciated by the general public
- Tea valued by experts
Tea loved by the public is usually sweet, smooth, and non-irritating.
Expert-level teas, on the other hand, often feature unique flavors—sometimes even odd or unappealing at first.
Why?
Because experienced tea drinkers have built a “flavor database” over time, enabling them to recognize rare and subtle notes within the tea.
A classic example is aged tea.
It has a characteristic “matured” aroma. Many people don’t like it at first, but true tea lovers can discover deeper flavors and a lingering aftertaste complexity that only comes with time and experience.
How Can You Train Your Tea Tasting Skills?
There are two key practices:
- Drink more tea
- Taste and smell a variety of things
Drinking tea helps build your sensory memory.
Tasting and smelling other flavors helps you associate tea with familiar objects.
For example, a mature tea may remind you of “Paulownia wood” or even “chewing tissue paper.”
These metaphors aren’t right or wrong as long as they help you connect the tea’s flavor to something real; they’re useful.
Stronger connections lead to clearer memory.
More memory means better judgment.
What If People Say You Don’t Know Tea?
Easy ignore them.
Tea is meant to bring you joy, not to satisfy someone else’s standards.
That’s all for my thoughts on learning to enjoy tea.
I hope this helps you on your tea journey. See you next time.
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