By Christopher Gronbeck
It used to seem ridiculous to me that aficionados would refer to a flavor wheel to assess the aroma and taste of wine…who cares if wine tastes like grapefruit or tobacco? And why do you need a chart to tell you what you’re smelling? But after getting a little more serious about wine, and giving the wheel a try as part of a series of classes, I got what it was all about: by learning to recognize flavors, you train your palate and thereby allow yourself to delve deeper into the subtleties and appreciate it at a more intricate level.

The Wine Flavor Wheel
I wondered recently if anyone had ever made a tea flavor wheel, for tea and wine are similar in their complexity and depth of expression. I didn’t find any, although I ran across a few interesting flavor lists. So I decided to make my own tea flavor wheel, an experiment to see if the wheel could do for tea what it does for wine: assist the bearer in recognizing, distinguishing, and categorizing flavors, training the palate verbally to bring that portion of the brain to bear on the complex substance, helping create a vocabulary that might translate into deeper understanding, and perhaps deeper enjoyment.
So below is my initial take on a tea flavor “wheel” (I’m not yet ready to spend the time to render it unto a circle, per se, until it’s more complete, or at least until I’m convinced that this is actually a useful endeavor). There are truly challenges to naming flavors, since some of the most tantalizing tastes and fragrances of tea seem to lack adequate analogs in other substances. Fine oolong teas, in particular, have an almost ineffable flavor that seems so unique, so elusive, that my flavor wheel might need a “high mountain oolong tea” wedge, more or less rendering it tautologically useless. (But I haven’t yet given up hope…even the dictionary describes words in term of words, and yet transcends its self-reflexivity.)
Also, the flavor wheel (okay…chart) has a lot of detail that really only applies to a small number of teas (could “fireplace” apply to anything other than Lapsang Souchong?), while other flavors are characteristic of so many teas that they’d benefit from further refinement (some of the grassy, floral, and earth flavors, in particular). And, of course, tea has an important feel or texture that’s not captured by flavor descriptors.
So perhaps more time, more experimenting, and feedback from others will help refine the tea flavor wheel, and maybe someday it will be worth curling up with Adobe Illustrator for an hour or two to actually make it round. But for now, it’s just the chart you see below, and maybe you’d be willing to give it a try sometime, and propose additions or refinements. Or maybe you’d just like to sip and enjoy your cup of tea…
– Christopher
Tea Flavor Wheel
Copyright 2009, Teahouse Kuan Yin
FRUITY Berries Citrus Tree Fruit Tropical FLORAL Jasmine |
VEGETAL Grass Wood Earth Mineral Marine Vegetables |
NUTTY Almond SWEET Honey SPICY Cocoa CHAR Ash |
October 8, 2016 at 2:28 am
Magnificent goods from you, man. I have understand your stuff previous to aand you’re just extremely wonderful.
I really like what you’ve acquired here, reaoly like
what you’re stating and the way in which you say it. You makme it entertaining and you still care for to keep it wise.
I cant wait to read far more rom you. This is really a terrific site.
April 13, 2013 at 11:02 am
Whats up this is somewhat of off topic but I was wanting
to know if blogs use WYSIWYG editors or if you have to manually code with HTML.
I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding expertise so I wanted to get advice from someone with experience. Any help would be enormously appreciated!
February 10, 2012 at 9:42 am
Rooibos Tea Health Benefits…
[…]The Tea Flavor Wheel: A Curious Proposition « Teahouse Kuan Yin[…]…
November 8, 2017 at 3:37 am
I am busy developing an activity for school children on south african indigenous teas, where we look at tea tasting and culture as well
sensory tea wheels are not easy to compile but I think it depends on the level of complexity you want to go into
comments and suggestions for exposing high school learners and students will be appreciated
thanx!!
February 9, 2012 at 2:04 pm
black tea health benefits…
[…]The Tea Flavor Wheel: A Curious Proposition « Teahouse Kuan Yin[…]…
January 14, 2012 at 9:50 am
interesting but I dont get it? I am trying to find complementary for green, red, white, and black teas. That way I can create my own flavored teas instead of being stuck with buying samples till I find the right spices herbs berries et. like the goji berry. How do you interpret this chart. everything in a list will work with everything else flavorwise in the list? Thanks new to flavor tastes so any help….Patrice
January 14, 2012 at 11:08 am
Thanks for your question, Patrice! I think this flavor chart applies more to the way we describe the flavor of a particular tea, rather than which flavors will compliment it, but it could certainly be helpful that way too! Describing the taste of your base tea is the first step to finding the flavors which will go well with it. :)
As an aside, when this post was made, it didn’t have the graphic, but it can be found at https://teahousekuanyin.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/tea-flavor-wheel.jpg.
December 29, 2011 at 1:34 pm
does green tea make you lose weight…
[…]The Tea Flavor Wheel: A Curious Proposition « Teahouse Kuan Yin[…]…
November 27, 2011 at 7:37 am
JOHNNIE WALKER GOLD LABEL…
[…]The Tea Flavor Wheel: A Curious Proposition « Teahouse Kuan Yin[…]…
October 27, 2011 at 1:38 pm
does green tea burn fat…
[…]The Tea Flavor Wheel: A Curious Proposition « Teahouse Kuan Yin[…]…
February 6, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Vitamin B12 is proven to scale back risking potential both cardiac arrest and stroke. Many reasons exist for besides this, though, why B12 is certainly a major vitamin relating to your diet regimen to help maintain overall a sound body, vitamin plays an essential roles inside our everyday life.
October 2, 2009 at 12:59 pm
This merchant has a Tea Wheel, but I think it’s about the type of tea not flavors. The picture on their site is too small to see. Nevertheless, I thought it was interesting and it’s how I landed here :-)
http://teasource.com/
October 25, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Thanks for the comment. We’ll work on getting the tea flavor wheel to enlarge nicely. It is in fact about flavors and not types. We had wonderful reactions to it at the Northwest Tea Festival earlier this month and plan to produced a published and printed version soon.
May 10, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Here’s a first take at a graphical tea flavor wheel. Comments welcome!
– Christopher
April 7, 2009 at 7:46 am
I put a slice of the wine flavor wheel in the post…good idea. I didn’t want to put an image of the whole wheel since the owners are very proactive about protecting their copyright :)
We indeed might need several wheels if we come up with too many descriptors! But until then, it’s interesting to have them all in one place so you can see where different styles of tea have overlapping flavors.
Viva la wine blog!
– Christopher
April 6, 2009 at 10:12 pm
A lovely idea Christopher! Is there a way to expand the image so we can have a better look at it? I wonder if it would work better to have a wheel for for each of the 6 major types of tea? So when does that wine blog get going?
April 6, 2009 at 6:22 pm
The idea is lovely! How can I get a bigger image? I wonder if different aspects of tea might do better with their own wheel…. or perhaps a wheel for each of the 6 main types of tea?