Found an interesting article on tasting that I thought the group might
find interesting. The article is on wine, but of course there are
parallels:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...tliving&sub=AR

I personally am often confounded by trying to describe the taste of a
particular tea, or trying to guess what a tea tastes like based on
someone else's description. The idea that people taste things
differently seems like common sense, but of course people want to
compare their experience to others. This seems like a promising way to
do so.

cha bing

cha bing > writes:

> Found an interesting article on tasting that I thought the group might
> find interesting. The article is on wine, but of course there are
> parallels:
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...tliving&sub=AR

Yes, it's very interesting. Assuming there's scientific truth behind
the article, I would think that having a palate tolerant of bitterness
is pretty much required to get much pleasure out of tea. And, as the
article says near the end, experience can eventually help you develop
an ability to enjoy subtleties of taste that might initially be
inaccessible to you.

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html
recent addition: Lu Tong

cha bing > writes:

> Found an interesting article on tasting that I thought the group might
> find interesting. The article is on wine, but of course there are
> parallels:
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...tliving&sub=AR

Having thought about this article intermittently for a few hours, one
thing that stands out is "salt suppresses bitterness".

This might explain why, when Tibetans boil, e.g., low-grade raw Pu'er
for hours, they add not only milk but salt.

It might also explain something that's puzzled me for years. As far
as I know, if you go far enough back in Chinese tea history, you find
people decocting (not steeping) *salted* green tea. I would love to
know what someone who's read the tea classics thinks about this.
Danny? MarshalN?

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html

The chapter on Brewing the Tea in Lu Yu's Classic of Tea says 'When
the boiling water is in its first stage, you may add a measure of salt
in accordance with the amount of water. You can tell when to stop by
sampling it.' The true Science of Tea, everything precisely measured
and specified! He never seems to say how much tea should be used per
person, either! Given the amount of space devoted to describing the
different kinds of froth and scum that appear as the water boils, I
think he was not using the purest bottled mineral water. Black scum
seems to be especially bad, he says it spoils the taste.

Certainly dried tea leaves boiled up are always sure to give a
splendidly bitter drink, the salt might indeed help mitigate it
slightly. Medicine is supposed to taste bad, after all. The Classic of
Tea's comments on the older, popular ways of adding other ingredients
also suggest that people had always tried to improve the taste:
'Sometimes such items as onion, ginger, jujube fruit, orange peel,
dogwood berries or peppermint are boiled along with the tea . . .
Drinks like that are no more than the swill of gutters and ditches.'
Whereas today in Korea people drink teas using almost everything in
that list apart from onions (and dogwood berries?), but without
boiling tea along with them of course. No salt, either.

Br Anthony

Lewis Perin > writes:

> cha bing > writes:
>
> > Found an interesting article on tasting that I thought the group might
> > find interesting. The article is on wine, but of course there are
> > parallels:
> >
> > http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...tliving&sub=AR
>
> Having thought about this article intermittently for a few hours, one
> thing that stands out is "salt suppresses bitterness".
>
> This might explain why, when Tibetans boil, e.g., low-grade raw Pu'er
> for hours, they add not only milk but salt.
>
> It might also explain something that's puzzled me for years. As far
> as I know, if you go far enough back in Chinese tea history, you find
> people decocting (not steeping) *salted* green tea. I would love to
> know what someone who's read the tea classics thinks about this.
> Danny? MarshalN?

Sorry to follow up my own post, but I'm actually forwarding a response
from Danny, who is having technical difficulties with Usenet. After
explaining his Usenet problem, he says:

Back to the article. Interesting! Recently some friends proposed
that our experience in tastebuds between tea an wine may not be that
different, so there could be something we can use from wine tasting
notes to relate to tea.

I was flipping through a book recently in a bookstore in Taipei on a
report of high fluorine poisoning (fluorosis) among the tibetans
caused by long term consumption of tea. The tea most tibetans used
is not pu'er (not the baoyan tea from XG~), but the low grade Nan-
Xi- Lubiancha, which they boil thoroughly with some salt and yak's
milk. I don't think they used salt to suppress the bitterness in the
tea, but to flavour the water and the gamey yak's milk. Someone
once mentioned also that salt may be used also to kill bacteria, not
sure how effective is that.

Adding salt to flavour tea was a practice popular during Luyu's
time, tea lovers from later periods till present think it is a waste
of taste and spoils the tea. In the 5th chapter of Chajing, if I
remember correctly, Luyu mentions that one can add a little salt
into the centre of the boiling water to flavour it to one's
preference, but cautions against putting too much salt, or one would
be drinking salt water, not tea.

Salt suppresses bitterness...isn't sugar a more pleasant
alternative? I remember my grandparents used to make me chew a
bitter leaf for my asthma, they would roll two leaves with a large
pinch of salt and gave it to me. The bitterness was hellish, so I
guess I'm a trained tolerant drinker...but I like riesling and
dessert wines! So I'm hypersensitive drinker as well...or I'm just
confused...

Bitter is a 'priced' flavour in Chinese tastebuds, usually
associated with 'cooling' properties and is said to benefit the
functions of the heart, spleen and liver. Tea during Luyu's time
and in the Japanese tea tradition, is priced for its bitterness and
gan properties; Luyu mentions that tea...whose nature is cold (han)
is best for those upright in spirit...he also says that tea's
character is to be bitter first, then sweet (gan). Judging from the
preparation methods laid down by Luyu however, I guess he was going
more for the bitter note in tea than the sweet aftertaste. The
demand for hui gan comes from a much later generation of tea lovers,
probably from the Ming period onwards.

Lew again: Regarding what Danny says about a "tolerant" taster
enjoying less-aggressive tastes like Riesling, I think the article
says this is quite normal; it just takes practice and experience. And
this undoubtedly applies to tea if it's valid in the first place.

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html

An Sonjae wrote:
> The chapter on Brewing the Tea in Lu Yu's Classic of Tea says 'When
> the boiling water is in its first stage, you may add a measure of salt
> in accordance with the amount of water. You can tell when to stop by
> sampling it.' ... describing the
> different kinds of froth and scum that appear as the water boils, I
> think he was not using the purest bottled mineral water. Black scum
> seems to be especially bad, he says it spoils the taste.

Here's a datum that might be relevant: many organic materials are much
more soluble in ion-free water. Adding a tiny amount of ionizable
inorganics can cause "salting out" of the organics, an effect very often
used in purifying the results of an organic synthesis, as well as in
keeping pasta from sticking together in the pot.

Salt added to water containing a lot of marginally dissolved organics,
e.g. from plant decay, might knock a lot of them out into a separate
phase (solid or goopy) that would settle, froth off or stick to the
vessel walls. Salt might also enhance the complexation of tannins with
caffeine and the like, effectively removing bitter and astringent
components from solution.

Just a thought-

DM

Curiosity got the best of me and I added a pinch of salt to my green
tea this morning. It didn't exactly improve the taste for me. It
seemed to take some of the sweetness out of the tea and may have
dampened the bitterness a little, but it also caused it to linger on
my tongue in an unfavorable way. It took away the refreshing quality
of the tea and make it heavier and more substantial tasting--like a
broth perhaps.

Interestingly, I went to the Freer Gallery in DC today and they have
an exhibit (one small room, actually) on japanese tea ceramics that
were for the common people (i.e., not tea ceremony wares). One of the
descriptions of a pot stated that it was the type in which coarse
everyday tea would be made, perhaps mixed with pickles, rice or beans.
I found that interesting, and thought of the breakfasts that I've
eaten in China, which have been much more likely to include small
pickled things than the panoply of sweets one would find in a typical
american breakfast. Maybe that isn't relevant to this discussion, but
it did make me consider that salted tea, like everything else, is
surely a taste acquired--be it through culture or some other means.

cha bing

On Mar 14, 9:36*pm, cha bing > wrote:
> Curiosity got the best of me and I added a pinch of salt to my green
> tea this morning. It didn't exactly improve the taste for me. It
> seemed to take some of the sweetness out of the tea and may have
> dampened the bitterness a little, but it also caused it to linger on
> my tongue in an unfavorable way. It took away the refreshing quality
> of the tea and make it heavier and more substantial tasting--like a
> broth perhaps.
>
> Interestingly, I went to the Freer Gallery in DC today and they have
> an exhibit (one small room, actually) on japanese tea ceramics that
> were for the common people (i.e., not tea ceremony wares). One of the
> descriptions of a pot stated that it was the type in which coarse
> everyday tea would be made, perhaps mixed with pickles, rice or beans.
> I found that interesting, and thought of the breakfasts that I've
> eaten in China, which have been much more likely to include small
> pickled things than the panoply of sweets one would find in a typical
> american breakfast. Maybe that isn't relevant to this discussion, but
> it did make me consider that salted tea, like everything else, is
> surely a taste acquired--be it through culture or some other means.
>
> cha bing

I think the tea item they're describing is ochasuke? It's basically
bad tea mixed with old rice and downed as a dish or even a whole
meal. My Japanese roommate would buy these packets that include all
the flavourings and stuff you need in an ochasuke, and you just add
water and rice and that'll be his dinner....

MarshalN
http://www.xanga.com/MarshalN