Study tea sommellerie as a chain of consequences: processing choices create categories, categories predict brewing behavior, and brewing outcomes must be described in precise sensory language. Work through categories by tracing each step the leaf undergoes, taste in controlled side-by-side comparisons, and test yourself by predicting liquor color, body, and flavor before you sip.
Anchor every category to its processing chain, not its country
Organize study around what happens to the leaf after plucking: withering, oxidation, kill-green, rolling or shaping, drying, and in some cases aging. Category, liquor color, and brewing behavior all follow from these steps.
Country-first memorization breaks down quickly, because a single origin can produce nearly every category: China alone spans green, white, yellow, oolong, black, and dark tea, and Japan and India each cross categories too. A processing-first model survives unfamiliar examples. If you know that kill-green halts enzymatic oxidation, you can explain why a green tea and a black tea from the same cultivar behave differently in the cup.
Build a one-line process map for each category and recite it forward and backward: white is withered and dried with no kill-green; green is kill-greened soon after picking; oolong is partially oxidized then kill-greened; black is fully oxidized with no kill-green step. Use this table as your map, then check it against real samples, including the samples shipped in the ITEI tea kit.
Country names tell you where a tea was made; processing tells you what it is. Both matter in sommellerie work, but only processing lets you predict the cup before you taste.
- White: wither, dry — no kill-green, minimal shaping
- Green: kill-green early, shape, dry — oxidation largely prevented
- Oolong: wither, bruise, partial oxidation, kill-green, shape, dry
- Black: wither, roll, full oxidation, dry — no kill-green
- Dark tea (e.g., puer): kill-green, then microbial post-fermentation, sometimes aged
| Category | Oxidation | Typical liquor | Default leaf-to-water start | Default water temperature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| White (e.g., silver needle) | Very low, uncontrolled | Pale gold | About 3 g per 150 ml | Around 75-80 °C |
| Green (steamed, e.g., sencha) | Halted early | Yellow-green | About 2-3 g per 150 ml | Around 60-70 °C |
| Green (pan-fired) | Halted early | Pale yellow | About 3 g per 150 ml | Around 75-85 °C |
| Oolong (light) | Roughly 15-40% | Gold to amber | About 3-5 g per 150 ml | Around 85-95 °C |
| Oolong (dark, rolled) | Roughly 40-70% | Amber | About 3-5 g per 150 ml | Around 95-100 °C |
| Black | Full | Red-brown | About 2-3 g per 150 ml | Around 95-100 °C |
Oxidation versus fermentation: two processes you must never blur
Enzymatic oxidation happens inside the leaf after cell walls break; fermentation is microbial activity, as in puer. They produce different chemistry, different flavors, and different storage behavior, so mixing the two terms produces wrong answers downstream.
Worked scenario: during a practice tasting, you are handed a dark, tightly rolled tea with a deep amber liquor and honeyed roast notes. You write "black tea" because the liquor is dark. The better decision is to trace the process chain: the tight ball shape and the way sweetness stays bright rather than malty point to a heavily oxidized rolled oolong, kill-greened at a partial oxidation stage. The mistake matters because category drives brewing: this leaf opens across multiple short infusions near boiling, while a black tea usually gets one or two longer steeps, so a wrong category yields a wrong service plan.
Correct this deliberately: whenever you name a category, force yourself to state its last processing step. If oxidation was stopped partway, say so out loud. Terms like "fermentation" should be reserved for genuinely microbial teas such as shou puer or aged dark teas, not used as a synonym for a black tea's oxidation. Precision here is not pedantry; it is the vocabulary your tasting notes and service recommendations are built on.
Brewing parameters: reason from leaf structure instead of copying charts
Temperature and steep time follow from the leaf: delicate, kill-greened leaves extract bitterness fast and need lower heat; rolled and fully oxidized leaves need heat to open. Treat published numbers as starting points you justify, not laws.
Practice justifying each parameter in one sentence. A young silver needle is mostly unbroken buds with no kill-green, so its extraction is gentle and slow, tolerating moderate heat. A pan-fired green is more robust but still bitter-prone, so moderate heat and short steeps protect sweetness. A rolled dark oolong is dense and needs boiling water just to uncurl, then rewards many short infusions. If you can state the why, you can adapt to any teapot, water, or leaf grade in front of you.
Self-test by prediction: for any sample, write expected liquor color, aroma, and mouthfeel before brewing, then compare. A prediction that misses — say, a green tea brewed at 85 °C that came out harsh — is more instructive than one that lands, because it forces you to isolate which variable caused the shift. Log these observations; a personal record of cause and effect replaces a dozen memorized charts with one transferable rule set.
Sensory vocabulary: describe three attributes per tea, not one impression
Structure every tasting note around liquor color, aroma at dry leaf and wet leaf and liquor, and taste including sweetness, bitterness, astringency, umami, and finish length. Vague impressions cannot be compared, improved, or defended.
Worked scenario: in a practice cupping you write "light, pleasant, tastes like good tea." Compare that with "pale gold liquor; dry leaf smells of hay and faint melon; liquor shows cut-grass sweetness, mild umami, low bitterness; finish short with slight dryness on the gums." The second note is a decision-making tool: it tells a colleague what to expect, and it tells you later whether your palate perception has shifted. The first note cannot be wrong or right, which means it cannot teach you anything.
Train this with minimal pairs: steep the same green tea at 60 °C and 80 °C and describe only what changed; taste a first and third infusion of a rolled oolong and name what faded and what emerged. In sommellerie work — during ITEI's online tasting sessions and beyond — the value of a note lies in its specificity, so grade yourself on attributes captured, not on fluency of prose.
Telling adjacent categories apart: white versus green, sheng versus shou
Adjacent categories differ by one or two processing steps, so taste them side by side and name the exact step responsible for the gap. Isolated tasting of one tea at a time never builds the contrast you need.
White versus green is the classic contrast: both are minimally processed, but white skips kill-green, so slow enzymatic activity continues faintly during withering and drying, giving soft hay, melon, and honey notes, while kill-green locks a green tea into vegetal, marine, or nutty territory depending on firing. Brew both identically and the difference in liquor color and astringency behavior becomes obvious and explainable.
Sheng versus shou puer is the microbial equivalent: shou (ripe) puer undergoes accelerated post-fermentation to approximate age, yielding deep earthy, woody smoothness, while young sheng stays astringent, bright, and camphor-edged, changing only across years of storage. Tasting the pair once, with notes, teaches more than reading ten summaries, because your palate records the contrast that text alone only abstractly describes.
Pairing logic: match intensity and tannin behavior, not tea names to dishes
Pair by structural interaction: astringent, tannic teas bind with fats and rich dishes; delicate vegetal teas sit beside light, clean flavors; smoky or roasted teas stand up to char and strong cheeses. Name the mechanism in every pairing you propose.
Build each recommendation as a cause-and-effect statement. A robust Assam-style black tea cuts through cream and butter because its astringency resets the palate between rich bites; a grassy steamed green pairs with salads and mild fish because nothing in the dish overwhelms its low bitterness; a roasted oolong echoes caramelized and grilled notes rather than fighting them. When you can state the mechanism, you can improvise pairings for dishes you have never practiced.
Run a three-way practice: one rich food (soft cheese), one neutral food (plain rice), one sharp food (aged cheese), each tasted with a light green and a full black. Record which tea recedes, which clashes, and which improves the food. Expected observation: the green turns bitter and thin against the rich cheese but shines with rice, while the black flatters the cheese and dulls beside delicate rice — a pattern you can then generalize to any menu.
A preparation sequence, cupping exercise, and readiness checks
Sequence study as: process maps first, category-by-category tasting second, brewing experiments third, pairing last. Finish each week by predicting before tasting and reviewing your log for patterns you still explain poorly.
An adaptable sequence: weeks one to two, write process maps for the six categories and recite them from both directions; weeks three to five, taste one category per week side by side with its nearest neighbor, using kit samples or comparable teas; weeks six to seven, run temperature and steep-time experiments within one category and log predictions; week eight, run the pairing grid and assemble a one-page summary of your mechanisms. If you are enrolled in the ITEI sommellerie program, your instructor's tasting sessions and the shipped tea kit fit naturally into the tasting weeks — for scheduling and administrative specifics, refer to itei.ca.
Core exercise — controlled white-versus-green cupping: brew 3 g of a silver needle and 3 g of a sencha, each in 150 ml at 75 °C for 2 minutes, side by side. Expected observations: the white shows paler liquor, softer body, hay and melon aromatics, slow-building sweetness; the green shows deeper color, more umami and cut-grass aromatics, and a sharper drying finish. Self-check rubric, one point each: you named the missing process step for each tea; you predicted both liquors correctly; your notes listed at least three attributes per tea; you explained the astringency difference by kill-green. Four of four is a learning milestone, not a prediction of any exam outcome.
Readiness checks: you can state any category's process chain without notes; you can justify every brewing parameter you use in one sentence; your tasting notes contain at least three named attributes and no standalone word like "nice"; you can construct a pairing with a stated mechanism for an unfamiliar dish. Any check that fails points you to the exact week above to repeat.
References and further reading
Use these references to explore the concepts and check the latest information from the relevant organizations.