I must admit until recently I did not do much tea tasting. However since I arrived to Taiwan, I probably test an average of 12 teas a day. Yes, I am in a frenzy here, discovering teas I did not know exist and still can not pronounce the names of.
Although the smell and colour of tea add to the complete experience of drinking tea (nobody wants to drink great tasting tea that smells like - well not nice). In addition, the smell can tell an experienced tea drinker some useful information regarding the environment as well as make it more pleasant.
Although for me the taste and "cha qi" are the most important aspects of tea drinking, like most people I like to "smell the tea" to get some extra pleasure and information (when I can identify the various layers of the smell).
To do this, I tend to use both a spoon, the standard testing cup lid and the tea cup. From the above methods, I believe the most standards tool is - you guessed it - "the standard testing cup lid". And here lays an important point - for me. The same tea will smell differently on almost every spoon!
This is due various reasons such as the shape of the spoon and the material the spoon is made of.
The 'little' spoon on the right was kindly given to me as a present. Little did I know, but this is a magic spoon!
Every tea I came across, no matter how bad it was, and oh boy did I get some toxic fumes through my nose, everything smelled GREAT on this spoon!
Personally I find this an 'inconvenience'. Nowadays, I tend to use this spoon only after I tested the teas and made the choice. Furthermore, I found it interesting that no matter how hard I shake the spoon of "excess tea" (you should not really do it). There is ALWAYS one drop left in the middle, interesting design!
I have a new spoon now, a much less forgiving one (not pictured in here)!
A Tip: As I said, I am extremely new to the tea world, but I find it amazing how different I get treated when I bring my own spoon (and cup) to a tasting session (different in a good way of course - from there it usually goes all way down...).
As for me, I will continue my experiments with spoons... .
Cheers.
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