Tea Tasting Wheel & Flavor Note Finder
Pick a tea type to see its typical flavor categories and notes, or search a note to find which teas carry it.
Oolong tasting wheel
Building a tasting vocabulary
Tasting notes are descriptive, not scientific measurements — two experienced tasters can reasonably disagree on whether a cup leans more “peach” or “apricot.” What matters is having a shared set of reference points to compare cups against, and to describe what changes as a tea ages, as an infusion progresses, or as you try the same tea from a different source.
Try tasting with all your senses in play: the dry leaf aroma, the wet-leaf aroma after rinsing, the liquor itself, and the empty-cup aroma left behind once you've finished drinking often tell slightly different stories about the same tea.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a tasting wheel?
A tasting wheel is a reference chart that groups the flavors and aromas you might notice in a food or drink into broad categories — floral, fruity, roasted, and so on — with more specific example notes underneath each one. Wine, coffee, and tea all have their own versions. The idea isn't to tell you what you should taste, but to hand you vocabulary for what you already notice.
Why do the categories differ so much between tea types?
Processing drives flavor more than the plant itself — nearly all tea comes from the same species, Camellia sinensis. Green tea is barely oxidized and stays vegetal and grassy; oolong is partially oxidized and often roasted, picking up floral and toasted notes; black tea is fully oxidized into malty, fruity territory; and pu-erh is aged or fermented into something earthy and woody entirely its own.
Can one tea show notes from more than one category?
Very often, yes. A good oolong might show floral, fruity, and roasted notes all in the same cup, sometimes shifting across several infusions as the leaf opens up. The wheel groups common notes by type as a starting reference, not a claim that every cup hits every note listed.
A tasting reference for general interest — notes are descriptive and subjective, not a guarantee of what you'll taste in any given cup.