Fresh grass
Cut-grass green — the smell of the fresh leaf surviving into the cup, and the marker of a green tea that is actually fresh.
The cut-grass aroma of green tea is the smell of the leaf's own wound response, largely a group of six-carbon compounds released when plant tissue is damaged, which is why it is the smell of a mown lawn as much as of tea. In Japanese green tea it is a positive and expected character and it is the first thing to go: a sencha that no longer smells of cut grass has been open too long, stored too warm, or is simply old. It is also the note that separates a steamed green from a pan-fired one, since pan-firing pushes the leaf towards toast and chestnut and steaming keeps it green. Twenty-four teas here carry the plain string 'fresh grass', making it the most-used vegetal note in the catalogue.
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
A family of six-carbon aldehydes and alcohols released when leaf tissue is damaged carries the cut-grass smell. It is a group of related compounds, not one molecule.
The chemical route is identified in the literature. Often a family of related compounds rather than one named molecule.
- Processing step
Steam fixation preserves it; pan-firing converts much of it into toasted and nutty character. This is the clearest single difference between Japanese and Chinese green tea.
A named production step reliably produces it. A statement about practice, not about chemistry.
Processing: process-steaming, process-pan-firing. Types: type-green-tea.
When it is a fault, and when it is not
Not a fault in green tea, where it is the point. A fault in a black or dark tea, where it usually means the leaf was under-oxidised or under-fired and the process was stopped short.
Not to be confused with
- Hay (Aroma) — Dried grass rather than fresh — the signature of white tea, and of green tea that has aged.
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.
cut grass · dark leaf · dry leaf · dry leaves · fresh grass · fresh sap · grass · green grass · green stem · light grass · sweet grass · sweet stem · wet leaf · young leaves
Teas whose notes resolve to this
Derived from the tasting notes on each tea, not assigned by hand.
- Aracha
- Asamushi sencha
- Baozhong
- Ben Shan
- Bi Tan Piao Xue
- Bitaco tea
- Ceylon green tea
- Chumushi sencha
- Darjeeling green tea
- Fukamushicha
- Genmaicha
- Gou Gu Nao
- Guricha
- Hou Kui supreme
- Huang Jin Ya
- Huang Zhi Xiang Dan Cong
- Indonesian orthodox black
- Jasmine dragon pearl
- Jin Shan Cui Ya
- Kagoshima sencha
- Kamairicha
- Konacha
- Korean green tea
- Kukicha
- Kyobancha
- Liu An Gua Pian
- Lu Shan Yun Wu
- Mao Xie
- Matcha
- Matcha usucha grade
- Matcha-iri genmaicha
- Mecha
- Sanpincha
- Sanxia Bi Luo Chun
- Sayama sencha
- Sejak
- Sencha
- Sheng maocha
- Shincha
- Shizuoka sencha
- Song Yang Yin Hou
- Tian Mu Qing Ding
- Uji sencha
- Vietnamese green tea
- Vietnamese lotus tea
- Wenshan Baozhong
- Wu Niu Zao
- Wuyuan Ming Mei
- Yu Hua Cha
- Yu Lu supreme grade
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.