Tea journal · Glossary
Tea words,
in plain language.
The terms you will meet in the journal and at any tea table.
- Astringency
- A drying, puckering feeling in the mouth, from catechins in the leaf. Pleasant in balance, harsh when a tea is over-steeped.
- Bombilla
- The metal straw with a filter at the bottom used to drink yerba mate from a gourd.
- Catechins
- The main polyphenols in tea. They give bitterness and astringency, and dissolve faster in hotter water.
- Chasen
- The bamboo whisk used to prepare matcha, carved from a single piece of bamboo.
- Chashaku
- The slim bamboo scoop used to measure matcha.
- Chawan
- A tea bowl for preparing and drinking matcha.
- CTC
- “Crush, tear, curl”: a machine method that makes small, uniform granules of black tea for strong, quick brews.
- Cultivar
- A tea plant variety selected and grown for particular qualities, such as flavour or hardiness.
- Fairness pitcher
- Also gong dao bei. A small jug the tea is decanted into, so every cup poured from it is equally strong.
- Flush
- A harvest period, when new shoots grow. Darjeeling’s first flush is in spring, the second in early summer.
- Gaiwan
- A lidded bowl with a saucer, used to brew and sometimes drink tea, especially in gongfu brewing.
- Gongfu cha
- Brewing with a small vessel, a high leaf-to-water ratio and many short infusions.
- Gyokuro
- A Japanese green tea shaded for about three weeks before picking, prized for its sweet, savoury depth.
- Hui gan
- “Returning sweetness”: the sweet sensation that rises in the throat after swallowing a fine tea.
- Kyusu
- A Japanese teapot, often with a side handle and a fine built-in filter.
- Liquor
- The brewed tea itself, as tasters call it.
- Maocha
- Tea leaf that has been processed and dried but not yet sorted, pressed or aged. The starting point for pu-erh.
- Matcha
- Shade-grown Japanese green tea, stone-ground to a fine powder and whisked into water.
- Oxidation
- The browning reaction when a picked leaf’s enzymes meet air. Controlling it is what separates green, oolong and black tea.
- Orange pekoe
- A grading term for whole-leaf black tea. It has nothing to do with oranges.
- Pu-erh
- Dark tea from Yunnan that changes through microbial fermentation and ageing. Raw (sheng) ages naturally; ripe (shou) is fermented quickly in piles.
- Rinse
- A quick first pour of water that is thrown away, used to wake up rolled or compressed leaves.
- Sencha
- Japan’s most common green tea: steamed, rolled into needles and dried.
- Tencha
- The shaded, steamed and dried leaf that is ground into matcha.
- Terroir
- Everything about a place (soil, altitude, climate) that shapes the taste of what grows there.
- Theanine
- An amino acid in tea that gives sweet, savoury flavour. It dissolves easily, even in cooler water.
- Tisane
- An infusion of herbs, flowers or fruit rather than the tea plant. Also called herbal tea.
- Umami
- The savoury taste, strong in Japanese green teas, especially shaded ones such as gyokuro.
- Yixing
- A city in China famous for its unglazed clay (zisha) teapots.