Monday night I attended a Tea Cupping class.
Tea cupping is a process of tasting and evaluating the quality of loose leaf tea. Tea cupping is a process that includes a number steps and is a vitally important method because tea quality varies widely.
Even tea from the same shipment, tea garden and processing batch can differ in taste and tea cupping is an ideal way to ensure quality control.
The term cupping is used to describe the examination and tasting of different teas to determine quality, taste, aroma, briskness, body and color. Cupping similar teas and comparing them against each other enables one to determine best value when making a purchase. Cupping a tea by itself will help you understand the characteristics of that particular tea.
That being said I stood in a walkway, four teaspoons clutched in my hand, accompanied by a friend and three other tea enthusiasts and waited patiently for the timers announce that our tea was finished brewing.
I had taken my first tea cupping class back in the fall just after I had visited the store (White August Tea) for the first time. That class covered the basics. What tea was, how to steep it, what water to use, what temperature the water is supposed to be, etc etc. Once we tried all the teas, prepared properly and poorly, we were sent along our way.
Last week another cupping class came to my attention and this time it was covering the basic teas. A generic listing of teas were listed as the tea types - one from each family - and it was purely about tasting the teas and getting to know each variety at it’s most pure form.
The teacher, and owner of the store, passed around the sipping bowl that was filled with unbrewed tea. We swished it around to see how all the loose leaves were different and took a moment to smell each varieties aroma. After it was brewed she passed the lids around so we could see what happened to the look of the leaves and how it affected their smell.
We tried a bitter Earl Grey that sucked the moisture from your mouth; a beautiful sencha that tasted like nori (I developed a hankering for sushi after that sip) and spring grass; a delicate white tea both crisp and refreshing and a smokey oolong that reminded me of inhaling bonfire smoke at summer camp. The two I did not try were herbals: a new ‘tea’ called honeybush and the other an unmixed rooibos.
She told us that the following classes would be building off the basic one we’d just completed: a class on all green tea; one with all whites; another all blacks; teas just from one region (Africa, China, Japan, etc); another with one of each type of tea from each of the most popular tea regions so we can compare their flavor, aroma and color. There are others I’m sure but I’ll find out when she sends out the invite, so until next time!
