Fishy
A genuine wet-piling fault in shou pu-erh — not, as vendor copy sometimes has it, a characteristic of the style.
Young shou pu-erh is sometimes described as fishy or pond-like, and the note is a real fermentation fault rather than an inherent property of wet-piled tea. It comes from a pile that ran wrong — too wet, turned too little, or finished at the wrong point — and a competently made shou does not have it at any age. The reason it is worth an entry is that the claim goes the other way in a lot of retail copy, where the note is presented as an authentic marker of the category and the buyer is told it will age out. Some of it does diminish with airing and time, which is what makes the claim plausible. It should not have been there. Note also that this is a different note from the clean marine and nori character of shaded Japanese green tea, which is not a fault and has its own record; the two get described with overlapping words and have nothing in common.
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
- Processing step
A wet-piling batch that ran too wet or was turned too little. Wetting and turning are separate named steps in shou production because both are how the pile is kept from going wrong.
A named production step reliably produces it. A statement about practice, not about chemistry.
Processing: process-wet-piling, processing-s32-pile-wetting, processing-s32-pile-turning. Types: type-dark-tea.
When it is a fault, and when it is not
A fault wherever it appears in shou pu-erh. The clean marine and seaweed character of shaded Japanese green tea is a different descriptor and is not a fault.
Not to be confused with
- Marine (Aroma) — Nori and sea air — the aroma that accompanies umami in shaded Japanese green tea, and a different thing from the taste it travels with.
What gets said that is not right
That a fishy young shou is normal and will age into something good. It is a fault at the pile, and a well-made shou does not have it to begin with.
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.