different factors in tea tasting, based on input from tea bloggers
I don’t mention blog posts here because it runs against the theme but this one was a little different, combining input from a number of tea bloggers, and even a wine maker, in discussing tasting issues. The shortest version is that taste preference is subjective—it just depends on the person—but even within one person there could be a number of factors that change sense of taste (or flavor sensitivity, if you must), including noise level, food recently eaten, and prior history. Other recent posts have been pretty cool too: I reviewed a tea from North Korea recently (good luck finding that one; a lot of the post is about how I did it), and I’m on Indonesian teas now, and did a vendor profile interview recently. The tasting post:
http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.com/2016/04/imagination-and-subjectivity-in-tea.html
Start with Immanuel Kant if you really want to tackle the subject. He is not a blogger.
Kant gives a more mathematical way to go about this… Proust will give you the answer that stretches beyond time; once we figure out time and space, this could make more or less sense.
I’ve read a bit of Kant, in the process of getting two degrees in philosophy. He did say some interesting things. I can’t say that I went beyond his most basic ideas about aesthetics, so nothing that he would say about developing tasting comes to mind.
Then you are forgetting Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment, his concept of “judgment of taste,” and his classic example of wine tasting. Or maybe you didn’t read it in two philosophy majors. Never mind. But you probably read Diderot, right?
Honestly with two philosophy majors I’m surprised you would need to source your argument from tea bloggers.
And, liquidproust, you should totally write that up. A cornerstone piece in your blog.
I’m working on a 21st century version of the meditations of Marcus Aurelius. It’ll include lots of what people thought be mundane things actually being the most insightful of all.
I didn’t study that much Kant, just one class each on “Critique of Pure Reason” text study and ethics, with some overlap in an aesthetics class, but my own study focus wasn’t on aesthetics. Maybe we should both read that Kant passage and write separate blog posts on it, or even all three of us. Roman philosophy really doesn’t get much attention in modern study, at least per my own experience, with a lot more emphasis on Plato and Aristotle, and more general interest in pre-Socratics, early origins, even though those ideas don’t exist as complete works now. I was most into Buddhism, which essentially isn’t even philosophy, although some analytic philosophy study tried to interpret it as such, based on later Tibetan works and mostly on Nagarjuna, Indian Madhayamika philosophy.
Of course tea is a subjective matter in regards to taste. It is for this reason that I don’t let anyone comments get to me, but then wonder why others do; though we can draw conclusions that they allow tea to enter their metaphysical reality and add spirtual attributes to it so negative comments effect them at their core as they would claim.
Opnions. Opinions. Opinions.
Also: how cool is it that smell and taste are the two senses that trigger memories? This provides a whole realm of possibilities for tasting tea; look I’m using Proust on Steepster :)
Yeah I sometimes get serious imagery forming in my head, like a kinaesthetic thing, lines and shapes of taste and texture – colours really get triggered for me, every taste has a different colour, and tea can be wonderfully complex like a piece of abstract art.
Then other times its images like forests and such.
I already put enough crazy ideas about how a sense of taste works in that post, and the internal process, but the way different people approach the subject and actual experience is most interesting to me. That’s why including comments from people seeing the subject differently worked better than writing more on one take. “Getting it completely right” in terms of description might not be a great goal, although it’s not one I completely reject, but I’m still back on how analysis might change the experience. Anyone here would have as much to go on as anyone else related to that since it’s one part of any review process experience.
I was wondering about those posts over on Tea Chat. You’ve made an excellent point. Another blogger once went as far as to say he felt that it took away from a lot of the experience of tea, for him, since he writes a very regular review blog, the type where posts about teas are going up all the time, so he’s always on that page. I’ve considered the same thing, the negative effects of the review experience. Of course someone can just try the same tea once for a review and once without any focus on that, even without making mental notes about aspects, but there is something deeper to analysis as a possible disruption. When I was younger I kept a journal, like a diary, and I considered the same thing about life experience itself, the possible negative impact of putting analysis between me and events, of constantly sorting them into narrative themes, and not just directly experiencing things. On the other side it seems possible some degree of analysis could add a layer of depth some would enjoy. I guess maybe that’s subjective too, if formal review is a good or bad thing, or if a very moderate version of it makes the most sense for someone.
At least in my own case the general response is positive, if anything biased towards there not being much feedback. One person on this site is negative about posts but it’s hard to think of any other feedback that’s not positive. As to the idea of it not seeming natural to make my ideas and experiences public, some degree of social isolation due to being an expat and parent has helped a lot with that. I don’t have much real-life contact relevant to sharing the experience of tea, especially since almost no one in this country (Thailand) is really into tea. But then I’d think that last part might sound familiar to people in the States too, that even if they’re in places where lots of people love tea that doesn’t mean the people that they know are into it.
This discussion reminds me of how I feel about photography as a barrier between me and my experiences. Especially when am experience is new, I find that taking a photo keeps me from being in the moment. My sister, who is a photographer, has the opposite perspective, that the act of taking a photograph immerses her in the moment.
That’s a bit of a tangent but it’s a cool tangent. I’ve considered the same thing when I’ve done the Japanese tourist thing on vacation, seeing everything through the screen on my phone as I keep snapping away. My kids help me with that by refusing to pose. I think the parallel is a good one; documenting and analyzing an experience can take away from it, for some. The one tea blogger in that post, Kevin, implied the opposite, that he felt he missed out on really examining the experience of tea due to not reviewing, since he drank it more mindlessly since he stopped reviewing. Of course someone could split the difference and notice a lot of details without writing or publishing them.
Yes, my sister would agree with Kevin. She is less sharply focussed on an experience when not capturing it. For me, maybe it is that I enjoy a moment more when I allow myself to be less structured. When drinking tea, I like to lose myself in the sensory experience rather than break it apart and evaluate it. When I enjoy writing reviews it is to capture the overall experience rather than all of the details and stages of the tea drinking. Sometimes I want to share the experience because it was so captivating, but usually it’s because I want to remember whether or not I liked a tea. I don’t write up a review to enhance the actual tea experience and writing, for me, does not have the effect of enhancing drinking tea. Very interesting things to consider, and so individual! I wonder why I enjoy reading tea reviews so much then?
Reveiwing things is not exactly fun for me, but it has made me sit down and really think about what I’m drinking and I can’t help but think it’s going to help me as a tea drinker. I’ve been drinking loose leaf for years, and since I’ve been reviewing and more importantly being a part of a reviewing community, my tea horizons have expanded exponentially.
Definitely get the subjective part though. I’m a notorious snacker when I drink tea and even when I don’t I can’t pretend that as a bitter greens eating, chili head, active fermenter, and bread snob I have anywhere the same tastes as anyone else. When someone referred to the yunomi bancha from the dark matter buy as “pickles” my interest was officially peaked. I cannot however deal with burnt despite a childhood of being forced to eat things that my parents assured me were “Cajun”.
It’s interesting the way a scorched taste in tea would put off most people but for some that would be just the thing. I tried a really dark roasted Tie Kuan Yin that brought this up recently. At first I really liked it, for novelty, for experiencing so much roast along with a lightly oxidized oolong. Then the next time I tried it the tea seemed a little out of balance due to that. I was wondering what a year or two of aging would do for settling that component, but then that’s getting into a different subject than taste and taste preference.
It’s normal for people to see taste sensitivity as better or worse rather than just different, back to the idea of it being a function of memory and experience, or even training. I’m not so sure. It really does seem possible people could experience foods in relatively different ways without it just relating to that, to more or less specific or accurate. The other issue is if separating tastes helps you enjoy them more, and here in comments that seems split, between people that like that experience and people that don’t, but most seem to appreciate it’s an interesting step to take to go with it a bit. But then this is essentially a tea review theme site.
This was back on the first page but with no new comments maybe because a spam comment was added and then removed. I wrote about blogging again last week, about a top 100 tea blogs list, with a section on what types of review content tea blogs might get into but don’t (eg. judging trueness to type for a category or value): http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.com/2018/06/top-100-tea-blogs-list-critique-and.html
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