Flavor is not produced, it cannot be directly created by craftsmanship.
Flavor is an experience, which is the result of the integration of information such as aroma, taste, texture, temperature, throat sensation, and aftertaste by the brain.
Craftsmanship can affect this experiential path, but cannot control how a person ultimately perceives it.
Just like communication between people: you can control the tone, rhythm, and content, but you cannot determine who the other person feels like.
So the key is never to please anyone, but to present oneself clearly.
Drinking tea is the same - if you think it tastes good, it's your experience; How others evaluate it has nothing to do with your feelings.
1.The starting point of flavor: Fresh leaves only give potential
Fresh leaves provide only some of the most basic 'possibilities'--
Aromatic precursor substances; Convertible aroma sources; The potential of structure and hierarchy; Taste base color (based on sweetness, bitterness, freshness, and astringency)
These things determine whether this fresh leaf can create a flavor in the future, but they cannot determine what the flavor will look like.
They are more like a piece of raw wood in the hands of carpenters: whether it can be carved, sharpened, or polished finely, these are determined by the base of the wood; But in the end, whether this piece of wood is made into a table, chair, or cabinet is completely not determined by the wood itself.
Tea is the same way. The starting point of flavor is in fresh leaves, but the essence of flavor is not in fresh leaves.
fresh leaves just drew a boundary first: it can go this way or that way, but it won't go beyond the range.
The true flavor is slowly developed within this range after being influenced, transformed, and shaped along the way; The structure, direction, hierarchy, and logic of flavor cannot be determined by fresh leaves.
2. The first layer of flavor shaping: first out, then normal
The first step in flavor is not hierarchy or structure.
But two fundamental questions: can it come out? Is it looking normal when it comes out?
For example, if withering is done well, the fragrance begins to come alive, and the precursor substances in the leaves have a chance to be converted into true fragrance.
If not done well, it's just green, stuffy, and mixed, and the flavor is blocked from the beginning.
It looks like a newborn baby, the first step is not to learn to speak or walk,but first open your eyes and feel the world; Only in this way can all the growth that follows happen.
Withering is essentially a process of allowing tea to "slow down first".
Different types of tea use different methods to remove the original plant flavor of fresh leaves, allowing the tea to enter a state where it can continue to shape.
For example, green tea uses withering, oolong tea uses withering, yellow tea relies on yellowing, black tea relies on fermentation, and white tea relies on long-term natural transformation
The methods are different, but the intention is completely the same: to make fresh leaves step out of their original plant flavor and stand at a starting point of 'ready to go down'.It's like a person who just woke up: opening their eyes is just the first step, the next thing to do is to truly wake themselves up; Only when you shake off the chaos and stabilize your state can you be considered 'entering today'. Tea is the same.
3.The second layer of flavor shaping: how to achieve flavor?
When tea enters the "moldable state", the flavor truly begins to gradually take shape.
This paragraph no longer deals with plant flavors, but rather decides what the flavor of this tea will ultimately become.
For example, making green: determining whether the flavor is "organized".
If you make it light green, the flavor will be light, straight, and sharp;
If you make it more green, the flavor will be thick, heavy, and layered.
You can understand it as: this step determines whether the flavor has logic.
For example, fermentation: it will cause the "temperament" of the flavor to begin to diverge.
Shallow fermented tea has a light and bright flavor;
Deep fermented tea has a stable and mellow flavor.
Fermentation does not change the sweetness or bitterness, but shapes the flavor and temperament; It's like deciding what kind of person a tea looks like.
For example, baking: it will determine whether the flavor can "stabilize"
If baked well, the flavor will become clean, stable, and mature;
If the baking is not done properly, the flavor will be weak, scattered, and lacking in strength.
It makes the flavor no longer impetuous, but calm, rooted, and thick.
Just as a person experiences more, their expression naturally becomes calm, and their sharpness gradually diminishes. Baking determines the maturity of flavor.
4.Presentation of flavor: flavor is a path, not an adjective
When drinking tea, what we drink is not just fragrance, sweetness, bitterness, and so on. These scattered labels are just a part of the flavor.
Flavor is a path, not a word.
This' path 'is not determined by a single step, but by many overlapping links.
For example, where does the aroma start, is there a front, middle, and back section, is the middle section stable or unstable, will the tail section dissipate, is there a unique temperament and rhythm?
The factors that affect flavor are far more than just the examples given earlier - the base of fresh leaves, the weight of each process, temperature, duration, technique, human judgment, the environment at the time, storage
Any variable that is one point more or one point less may have a completely different direction of flavor.That's why flavor cannot be 'made', it can only be influenced, guided, and shaped.
Flavor is the whole, the path, the structure, and how all information is combined into an experience. It won't deceive people.It presents the entire process logic that a tea has gone through.
Just like a person's temperament, it is always determined by their experiences.
