The library

A glossary

Astringency: The drying, gripping feel on the tongue and gums, from the leaf’s tannins. Not a taste, and not the same as bitterness.
Autumnal: Darjeeling’s last flush of the year, October and November: rounder and woodier than the spring’s.
Cha qi: The feeling some teas give, warmth, calm or alertness, beyond their caffeine. Some take it more seriously than others.
CTC: Crush, tear, curl: leaf cut by machine into small even pellets that brew quickly and strongly. Most teabags are CTC.
First flush: The first picking of the year after the plants wake in spring. In Darjeeling, March and April: pale, green and brisk.
Flush: A round of new growth on the tea bush, and the picking of it.
Gaiwan: A lidded bowl on a saucer, for brewing and sometimes drinking from. Porcelain shows you the leaf and keeps no memory of past teas.
Gongfu: Brewing with skill: a small pot, plenty of leaf, short infusions, many of them.
Huigan: Returning sweetness: a sweet taste rising in the throat a little after swallowing. Prized in pu-erh and oolong.
Kyusu: A Japanese teapot with a hollow handle at the side, for sencha and other greens.
Liquor: The brewed tea in the cup, as tasters call it.
Maocha: Leaf that has been made but not yet sorted, blended or pressed: pu-erh’s raw material.
Mingqian: “Before Qingming”: Chinese green tea picked before the festival in early April, the youngest and most prized.
Orthodox: Leaf rolled whole, by hand or by machine that imitates the hand, rather than cut (see CTC).
Oxidation: The browning of a leaf once its cells are broken, as an apple browns: none in a green, all in a black.
Pekoe: From the Chinese for white down: the fine hairs on young buds, and in grades, a whole leaf of good size.
Pu-erh: Dark tea from Yunnan, often pressed into cakes, made raw (sheng) to age slowly or ripe (shou) by fermenting in a heap for weeks.
Second flush: Darjeeling’s summer picking, May and June, with the muscatel note it is famous for.
Sheng: Raw pu-erh: pressed without the ripening heap, sharp when young, deepening over years and decades.
Shincha: “New tea”: the year’s first Japanese sencha, picked in late April and May and drunk while fresh.
Shou: Ripe pu-erh: piled damp and turned for weeks so it darkens and mellows at once, a method devised in Kunming in 1973.
Tetsubin: A Japanese cast-iron kettle for heating water. The enamelled iron teapots sold under the name are tetsukyusu.
Tippy: Having many buds, which dry golden or silver. On grades, the T.
Tisane: Anything infused that is not tea: chamomile, peppermint, rooibos, hibiscus. Herbal tea, if you must.
Umami: The savoury, brothy taste, strong in shaded Japanese greens such as gyokuro.
Wet leaf: The leaf after brewing, opened out: tasters look at it as closely as at the dry.
Yixing: A town near Shanghai whose unglazed clay teapots take on the tea brewed in them, so each is kept for one kind.