What happens at a tea tasting

Every morning at ten, we lay out a long row of white cups on the tasting table. Each holds tea from a different lot, brewed the same way: 2.8 grams of leaf, boiling water, exactly five minutes.

First we look at the dry leaf: its size, colour and how evenly it is rolled. Then we look at the wet leaf after brewing, which shows how well it was withered and fermented. Bright, coppery leaf is good; dull, dark leaf is not.

Then we taste. Tasters slurp loudly from a spoon, which sprays the tea across the whole tongue and draws in air, so you catch the aroma as well as the taste. We roll it around, notice the body, the brightness and any faults, and then spit it out. On a busy day we taste over a hundred teas.

We write notes for every cup, and compare it to the same garden’s tea from earlier years. Most lots are turned down. The ones we buy are the ones we keep coming back to at the end of the row.