Caramel and sugar
Cooked-sugar notes from light caramel to dark treacle, plus the specific 'rock sugar' descriptor of Chinese tasting language.
Caramelisation is a different reaction from the Maillard one that produces toast and chestnut: it is sugars breaking down under heat without amino acids involved, and it gives a rounder, sweeter, less savoury result. In tea the two usually happen together, since leaf contains both sugars and amino acids, but the descriptive band is distinct enough that tasters separate them. The catalogue runs from light caramel on gently roasted oolong through dark caramel and molasses on heavily roasted and aged material to treacle on some Assam. Two entries deserve a note. Sugarcane is used for a fresh, green-sweet character rather than a cooked one, mostly on light oolong and white tea. Bing tang — rock sugar or ice sugar — is a specific Chinese descriptor for a clean, crystalline sweetness with no caramel edge at all, and it is a compliment paid to high-mountain oolong and good sheng.
Which sense this is
Aroma. Volatile compounds, smelled through the nose or retronasally while drinking. Nearly all descriptive tea vocabulary is here, including words people say they can taste.
Compound descriptor. A familiar thing used as shorthand for a mixture of sensations. Nobody detects 'chestnut' — they recognise it.
Where it comes from
- Established chemistry
Caramelisation — sugars breaking down under heat without amino acids — is a distinct route from the Maillard reaction, and gives a rounder, sweeter result. Both usually occur together in a roasted tea.
The chemical route is identified in the literature. Often a family of related compounds rather than one named molecule.
- Processing step
Roasting, and the resting cycles between roasts that let the character settle rather than sit on the surface.
A named production step reliably produces it. A statement about practice, not about chemistry.
Processing: process-roasting, process-charcoal-roasting, processing-s32-roast-resting. Types: type-oolong-tea.
Not to be confused with
- Toasted grain (Aroma) — Toast, rice, popcorn and warm bread — Maillard chemistry, and the clearest case in this vocabulary of a note with a known cause.
The phrases this covers
Editors write tasting notes in their own words. These are the exact phrases in the catalogue that this descriptor accounts for — the mapping is authored phrase by phrase, so nothing is grouped by a rule that guessed.
caramel · dark caramel · ice sugar · light caramel · molasses · sugarcane · toasted caramel · toffee · treacle · warm sugar
Teas whose notes resolve to this
Derived from the tasting notes on each tea, not assigned by hand.
- Alishan oolong
- Ban Tian Yao
- Bingdao sheng pu-erh
- Da Hong Pao
- Da Yu Ling
- Dong Ding
- Dong Pian
- Fushou Shan
- GABA oolong
- Gui Hua Wulong
- Guifei oolong
- High mountain oolong
- Hojicha
- Hong Shui Dong Ding
- Hong Shui oolong
- Huoshan Huang Da Cha
- Kuki hojicha
- Lao Ban Zhang sheng pu-erh
- Lao Cha Tou
- Li Shan
- Mauritian vanilla tea
- Nong Xiang Tie Guan Yin (roasted)
- Rou Gui
- Ruhuna
- Sabaragamuwa tea
- Scottish Breakfast
- Shui Jin Gui
- Tan Bei oolong
- Tie Luo Han
- Wuyi Jin Guan Yin
- Wuyi rock tea (yancha)
- Wuyi Shui Xian
- Xigui sheng pu-erh
- Xing Ren Xiang Dan Cong
- Yingde Hong
- Zhangping Shui Xian
Nearby
A tasting note is a comparison, not a measurement. Where the route from leaf to sensation is established it is labelled as such above; where it is not, the page says so rather than supplying a mechanism the descriptor has not earned. See the rest of the vocabulary for how the axes divide up.