In fact, when you drink tea, you are not mindlessly swallowing one mouthful after another. Your brain is working hard to “learn” with unexpected diligence, and sometimes even doing some preview homework.
For example, when you tell me that the tea you are preparing to drink is a rock tea that has been brewed over high heat and has not yet subsided, you do not need to cut open the bag, and will start actively predicting what kind of fire fragrance it will have; Alternatively, you could take out a bubble of white hair silver needles from Fuding, and enjoy the sun exposure, charcoal roasting, aroma of grains, and rich fragrance of Da Hao… before the bubble even begins, we have already drunk it once in the cerebral cortex.
However, in addition to these fragrances that have already been engraved into DNA, there are also some fragrances that are unfamiliar to us.
For example, in the Maocha period of rock tea and the transformation period of white tea, the question mark state often appears, what is called “this fragrance is very pleasant”, “this fragrance smells very uncomfortable”, “this tea has the flavor of Mount Wuyi Phoenix eggs”, “this is not the warehouse flavor, this is already out of ginseng fragrance”
The joys and sorrows of humans are not interconnected, we only feel that they are noisy. Are you sure everyone is speaking Chinese? How come I understand every word, but I still can’t do this’ question ‘? Everyone is secretly learning behind my back, right!
However, true tea lovers dare to face brand new courseware, unfamiliar? It’s just that it hasn’t caught our attention yet! I just need to learn!
01 Learned fragrance Immersed in the fragrance of knowledge
Smelling floral water brings to mind summer, smelling disinfectant water brings to mind hospitals, smelling the scent of essential oils brings to mind the pure and drowsy years of high school… The fragrance intertwined with memories will resurface when smelled again, deepening that memory and leaving a deeper impression on that scent.
Even if there is no precise place in memory for a certain odor, our brain will actively associate it. This is just like AI expanding images, smelling the sun exposure smell of Fuding Silver Needle immediately brings up all the scene memories related to sunlight.
Therefore, often times, aroma is a memory retrospective, and describing aroma is describing your memory. There is a saying circulating in the martial arts world about this situation called ‘learned fragrance’.
2021 Zhuke Drunken Haitang Soup Color
The human nose is not as sensitive and objective in perceiving fragrance as an electronic nose, and is easily influenced by various external factors. To accurately identify specific odors and remember them, the frequency of contact is crucial. As the saying goes, a good memory is not as good as a bad nose. It is said that it is the fragrance of “learning”, how can one remember it if they are not familiar with it?
When describing aromas, we usually divide them into two types: one is a specific description of a certain substance, such as ruo, floral, milky, citrus, etc., and the other is an abstract description, such as pungent, disgusting, happy, joyful, etc.
For example, you have smelled the aroma of citrus multiple times and feel very familiar with it. When drinking tea, you inevitably “backtrack” on this memory again, and at this point, you can easily determine that the tea has a citrus like fruit aroma. Really, if only the college entrance examination were so simple!
And when we drink tea with a distinct mountain aroma, we feel like we are in that mountain area. The combination of factors such as soil, tree age, distribution of moss on the trunk, location of the mountain field on a hill or at the bottom of a pit, and whether the mountain environment is sunny or shady is a set of sensory memories that we broadly classify as “pleasant”.
In addition, the concentration and level of change of odors are also the focus of memory. If the time span is reduced to within one cup of tea, using rock tea as a teaching material is a good choice. At the stage of raw tea making, the changes in aroma levels and concentration are often given special attention. The amount of roasting that can be retained and how much it has changed is related to the adjustment of the process.
The logic of making rock tea is often based on a score of 100, and the best tasting period is the new tea period. The aroma change of each water is a proof of the excellent monetization power of rock tea, and the richer the level of change, the more profound the memory left.
The concentration and level of change in the aroma of white tea are mostly measured by the year, with the fresh and refreshing aroma and aged aroma going in opposite directions, and then starting to “carve the boat and seek the sword” in terms of flavor changes. What is this year’s new tea like? What will be transformed in five or ten years?
However, it is best to use materials from different years for comparative learning that can appear in the same time and space, so that the memory effect will be better!
02 There are some fragrances I don’t know if I don’t ‘learn’
The logic of olfactory training and taste training is different. Taste requires increasing sensitivity and focusing on perceiving the flashes and intensity of the mixed flavors of sour, sweet, bitter, salty, and fresh in tea soup. Smell relies more on extensive knowledge and strong memory, storing as many clear and specific odor memories as possible in one’s own memory bank.
Of course, the recognition of aroma varies depending on personal memory, especially for abstract memories, which sometimes leads to a certain misjudgment of the general classification of aroma as pleasant or unpleasant.
In rock tea, we talk about pleasant aromas such as floral, fruity, powdery, and varietal aromas. The powdery aroma is not just a single scent or odor, but rather a manifestation of the aroma and texture.
Usually, flowers with a strong floral aroma and pollen scent will have a prominent powdery feeling, which is closely related to the maturity of the green, roasting temperature, and the variety itself.
When pink fragrance appears, it often accompanies floral, milky, and woody fragrances, creating a sweet or calming aroma atmosphere. This kind of atmosphere, you often cannot list them one by one, but you can always feel genuinely happy.
Cockroach odor can be said to be a rather repulsive odor in rock tea flavor, and its appearance has nothing to do with the tea itself, even being innocently implicated. The water sieves, charcoal, packaging, and tea utensils that have been crawled over by cockroaches will be immersed in the tea through processes such as withering, charcoal roasting, long-term storage, and brewing. Once they become infected with the scent of cockroaches, it is difficult to shake them off, which is no different from being haunted by ghosts.
But for friends in the north, this smell is not sensitive, and what they perceive is only an unpleasant and vague scent. After all, the aggressive scent of South American cockroaches is really beyond their control for those who have only seen German cockroaches.
It’s like we have different versions of textbooks in the north and south, we have the Fujian Education Press and they have the People’s Education Press.
Whether it is rock tea or white tea, among the old teas, the recognition of warehouse flavor and ginseng flavor is relatively vague. If there is not enough data tried, the judgment will be blurred.
Cang flavor is an easily occurring odor that occurs when tea leaves are not sealed properly during storage, and the atmosphere that is enclosed and not transparent in the environment enters the tea to mix flavors. Sometimes, improper humidity control may also result in “wet storage”.
But the taste of ginseng is different. Ginseng flavor is a very advanced aroma in the branch of medicinal aroma transformed from old tea. The 2006 Dahongpao tea bricks we shared recently have already transformed into a very noticeable ginseng flavor.
There is also a rare seafood flavor found in white tea, which is quite similar to the smell of seafood. It is commonly found in white tea from the eastern Fujian region, such as the Ningde Jiaocheng and Fuding white tea production areas that we occasionally encounter.
The White Tea Mountain Field, located in Fuding, is shrouded in sea mist
People like us who don’t love seafood and don’t usually come into contact with seafood are not very sensitive to this odor. Often, when we encounter it, it is thought that there is a problem with the storage and processing, and the external odor is absorbed by the tea leaves, which leads to a strange odor.
Another possible cause of this scent is soil attachment. Mountains may be able to resist some sea winds, but the soil of nearby mountains may unconsciously contain the scent of the ocean. However, this speculation is for reference only, as white tea produced on islands surrounded by the sea may not necessarily have this scent.
At this point, we can only weakly shout out, ‘We can’t finish learning, we can’t finish learning at all.’. The fun of tea lies in its charm and possibilities that always attract you. You never know how many new courseware will be waiting for you to learn in the future! In short, as the saying goes in the martial arts world: drink more, hear more, and remember more! (Remember to bring your brain!)