Down to a tea

Most Britons would consider themselves fairly talented consumers of tea, but to be considered an expert, you would need to sample one million cups at 125mph. Roderick Easdale meets the professional tea tasters

- Roderick Easdale

WE have a saying in this industry that you have to taste a million cups of tea before you finally get it,’ laughs Tresham Graham. ‘In 1996, when I tasted my first batch of 150 or so cups for Birchall, I remember being stunned how our senior taster had picked out differences in all these teas, which, quite frankly, had tasted much the same to me—but day by day, batch by batch, the ability to differentiate comes. We’re born with a decent sense of taste and smell, it’s simply a matter of engaging it, honing it and thinking about it. Most people have the ability to be a taster.’

‘You need passion and a sensitivity to what is happening in your mouth, nose and mind,’ elaborates Edward Eisler, founder of tea company Jing. ‘If I brought you in and you tasted all day, every day for a week, you’d develop enormously during that week, you really would. To become accomplished would take three to five years; to become really very good, about 10 years.’

Oscar Woolley, co-founder of Belfast tea maker Suki, agrees that all people can taste, but argues that ‘describing it is where the art comes in’.