--- title: 'The Language of Taste: How to Describe Tea' url: 'https://howtotea.me/science/evaluation/tasting-vocabulary' markdown: 'https://howtotea.me/science/evaluation/tasting-vocabulary.md' lang: en date: '2026-10-25' description: 'The Chinese standard GB/T 14487, the English trade vocabulary, Japanese terms and words like hui gan: how to name what you taste and train your palate.' --- # The Language of Taste: How to Describe Tea Editors · October 25, 2026 · 9 min read Tea has three large vocabularies: the Chinese standard of terms, the English of London brokers, and a Japanese list of defects. A precise description depends on order, attribute type and degree, not on pretty comparisons. ![A tasting spoon on a bowl of amber tea with dry oolong beside it](https://howtotea.me/images/c/o/v/e/r/cover-ca8c8f9a.webp) Illustration Tasting vocabulary Chinese standard: GB/T 14487-2017, in force since May 1, 2018 Flavor wheel: T/CTSS 58-2022, 155 attributes English standard: ISO 6078:1982, black tea only Degree scale: from "none" (0) to "pronounced" (5) Order of description: dry leaf, liquor, aroma, taste, infused leaf Ask two people what the same tea smells like and you may get "flowers" and "hay." Both are right, but you can't compare the answers. So professionals use vocabularies, where every word has a definition and many have a degree. There are three such systems, plus a handful of concepts that grew up outside the standards and a practical order for talking about tea so that others understand you. ## Three vocabularies **Chinese.** The core document is the national standard GB/T 14487-2017, *Tea vocabulary for sensory evaluation*[1](#fn:1). It is a recommended standard, in force since May 1, 2018, and replaced the 2008 edition; the first edition dates from 1993. It covers all Chinese teas: general terms first, then separate chapters for green, yellow, dark, [oolong](https://howtotea.me/teas/oolong), white and red (black) teas, and for compressed teas. Each entry gives a Chinese term, an English equivalent and a short definition. In 2022 the Chinese Tea Science Society issued T/CTSS 58-2022, a "flavor wheel": 48 colors, 17 tastes and 90 aromas, 155 attributes in all. Each carries a mark for consumer preference, so the professional language is tied to what people like to drink. Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences published a first version, with 120 attributes, in 2019. **English trade.** It grew out of the London and Colombo markets, where brokers discussed [black tea](https://howtotea.me/teas/black) with planters. The Bradshaw and Yuille glossary sorts terms into dry leaf, infused leaf, liquor and general characteristics. The words were chosen so that each word could be traced back to a fault at the factory: harsh points to under-withered leaf, grey leaf to abrasion during sorting, sour and stewed to faulty processing or drying. ISO 6078:1982 codified this vocabulary for black tea, and the standard is being revised in 2026. **Japanese.** At the All-Japan Tea Competition judges score appearance, aroma, liquor color and taste. For ordinary sencha, 75 of the 200 points go to aroma, 30 to color, 75 to taste and 20 to appearance. Points are deducted for faults, and most terms in the vocabulary are names of defects. A NARO survey traces this to the list's origins: it was drawn up by buyers who needed to pay less. Judges rarely use words of praise. ## How a Chinese term is built Most terms are compounds whose logic shows on the surface. The two-syllable 黄绿 means "greenish yellow," with the head on the second syllable. 板栗香 means "roasted chestnut aroma": a reference plus a category. This transparency lets you assemble a description from parts. Degree comes from a small set of function words: 微 "slightly," 稍 "somewhat," 有 "present," 多 "a lot," 显 "pronounced." T/CTSS 58-2022 maps them onto a scale from 0 to 5. The phrase 稍有花香 reads "somewhat floral aroma," and 显毫 reads "tips pronounced." Taste is split along three axes: concentration, from light 淡 to dense 浓; basic tastes, meaning sweet, umami, bitter and sour; and sensations such as 滑 smoothness, 厚 body, 涩 astringency and 干 dryness. The split matters because in everyday speech all of it collapses into "tasty." Chinese terms often carry a diagnosis. 闷黄味, "stewed yellow" taste, means the leaf was not spread out in time after fixation or sat too long in rolling. Over-firing comes in three degrees, from 高火味 (a lightly scorched crust) through 老火味 to 焦味, "burnt." A single word tells you what happened to the leaf. ## Words that are not on the list Enthusiasts, especially oolong and [pu-erh](https://howtotea.me/teas/dark/puer) drinkers, have a language of their own alongside the standards. Some of these words entered the standards, some did not. First is **hui gan** (回甘), returning sweetness. The 1993 standard defined it modestly: "a good, slightly sweet aftertaste." The 2017 edition is more exact: after the swallow, sweetness at the root of the tongue and in the throat, with a moistening feeling. In the 8th century Lu Yu described something close: "bitter in the mouth, sweet after the swallow, that is tea." Some authors separate hui gan, a cooling sensation in the throat, from hui tian, the delicate sweetness of the finish itself. The disagreement is real, and there is no agreed boundary. The physiology behind it is poorly understood. A 2022 experiment (Chong et al.) linked the strength of hui gan to prolonged salivation and a salivary protein[2](#fn:2). A mixture of epicatechin and epigallocatechin got the strongest rating, and participants split into "sensitive" and "insensitive" groups. That is one study, not an explanation. **Sheng jin** (生津): salivation under the tongue and at the cheeks. Related terms are 喉韵 hou yun, "throat rhyme," meaning how long and how gracefully the flavor holds in the throat, and 茶韵 cha yun, the completeness of a tea, "like lines of a poem." These ideas came from enthusiasts and are open to debate. **Yan yun** (岩韵), "rock rhyme," of Wuyi oolong. The 1993 standard offers only the formula 岩骨花香, "rock bone, flower fragrance." Four authorities cited in one Chinese article give four definitions, from the scent of Wuyi soil to a sweet, full taste that stays long on the tongue. If the word turns up in the description of a tea like [Da Hong Pao](https://howtotea.me/teas/oolong/da-hong-pao), read it as strong varietal aroma and a long aftertaste, not as an exact parameter. **Cha qi** (茶气): the "breath" or "energy" of tea. None of the reviewed passages of the standards mention it. One writer describes it as a force that makes your lower back sweat, and states plainly that some people deny such an effect. People report the sensation, but no instrument has measured it. Other words belong to particular teas. 冷后浑 (cream down): the pale haze of a cooled black tea liquor; by tradition it marks a good strong tea, but no source bears this out. 紫铜色 (coppery): a bright copper infused leaf. 菌花香: the aroma of "golden flowers," the mycelium of *Eurotium cristatum* in Fu Zhuan tea. The 覆い香 (ooika) of gyokuro and [matcha](https://howtotea.me/brewing/methods/matcha) resembles nori and is linked to dimethyl sulfide, which builds up when the bushes are shaded. ## Three traps **"Sweet at the tip of the tongue, bitter at the back."** Trade sites still print this diagram, but there is no "tongue map": receptors for all the basic tastes are found in every zone of the tongue. **Astringency as a taste.** The Chinese wheel files it among sensations, and physically that is right: a tightened tongue, not a signal from taste buds. It comes from the [polyphenols](https://howtotea.me/science/chemistry/polyphenols) in tea. **Old versus spoiled.** The standard distinguishes 陈醇, aged mellowness from good raw material and correct [storage](https://howtotea.me/brewing/basics/storage), and the fault 陈味, an unpleasant note resembling oxidized fat. Whenever people argue about aged pu-erh, this is the distinction that matters. Taste also reaches beyond the tongue. The Japanese survey stresses that "taste" at a competition includes everything perceived by the nose, and tasters slurp the liquor noisily from a spoon to coat the whole mouth. The aroma that rises to the nose from inside the mouth, called retronasal, completes what people end up calling flavor. The chemistry behind [tea aroma](https://howtotea.me/science/chemistry/aroma) is a subject of its own. ## How to describe a tea in practice The standard itself dictates the order, the same in every chapter: dry leaf, liquor color, aroma, taste, infused leaf. For brewing procedure and scoring, see [tasting by ISO 3103](https://howtotea.me/science/evaluation/tea-tasting) and the Chinese [shenping evaluation](https://howtotea.me/science/evaluation/shenping). 1. **Type first, then degree.** Say what it is: floral, fruity, roasted. Then how much: slightly, noticeably, strongly. "Slightly floral, strongly honeyed" says more than "pleasant aroma." 2. **Four traits of aroma.** Type, strength, cleanness and persistence. An aroma can be clean or muddy, long or "floating," gone as soon as it appears. 3. **Bitterness and astringency apart.** You feel the first on the tongue and the second as dryness and tightness. Sweet and umami make a third pair; umami is linked to [theanine](https://howtotea.me/science/chemistry/theanine). 4. **Hui gan apart from sweetness.** Wait after the swallow. If sweetness or coolness arrives later, after the tea is already down, that is hui gan. 5. **Name a fault by its cause.** Not "unpleasant" but "over-fired," "stewed," "sour." That way you also remember how to avoid it. 6. **Keep a reference.** The [green tea](https://howtotea.me/teas/green) lexicon of Lee and Chambers (31 attributes, 138 samples from nine countries) anchored each word to a sample. At home, use a control tea: the same tea you return to now and then as a baseline. Don't rush to metaphors. Fruit, flowers and spices are fine in a description, since they are the reader's language, but they sit on top of words about color, strength, bitterness and astringency, not in place of them. ## Common questions How is hui gan different from ordinary sweetness in tea? Ordinary sweetness is felt at once, in the mouth. Hui gan arrives after the swallow: sweetness and coolness rise from the root of the tongue and the throat. The 2017 standard defines it as sweetness at the root of the tongue and in the throat with a moistening feeling. Some writers give the delicate sweetness of the finish its own word, hui tian. Are astringency and bitterness the same thing? No. Bitterness is a basic taste detected by taste buds. Astringency is a physical sensation of a tight, dry tongue and cheeks. The 2022 Chinese flavor wheel lists astringency among mouthfeel sensations, next to smoothness and dryness, not among tastes. Where do I start if I want to tell teas apart? Compare two teas brewed the same way and name only what differs: liquor color, aroma strength, bitterness, astringency, length of the aftertaste. Equal grams and time matter more than which teas you pick. A reference sample helps: in a green tea lexicon study, fixed reference samples kept the panel from drifting. Notes 1. National Platform for Standards of the PRC (SAMR), card of GB/T 14487-2017: [std.samr.gov.cn](https://std.samr.gov.cn/gb/search/gbDetailed). A review on July 26, 2021 left the standard in force. [↩](#fnref1:1) 2. Chong P. H. et al. Tea compound-saliva interactions and their correlations with sweet aftertaste. npj Science of Food, 2022: [nature.com](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41538-022-00123-9). [↩](#fnref1:2) --- ## Navigation - Parent: [Tea evaluation and tasting](https://howtotea.me/science/evaluation.md) - Previous: [Tea Tasting: ISO 3103 and Professional Cupping](https://howtotea.me/science/evaluation/tea-tasting.md)