Hou yun
A Chinese evaluative category for what a tea does in the throat after swallowing — depth, coolness, and how far down it is felt.
Where huigan is about a returning sweetness, hou yun is about location and carriage: whether the tea's effect is felt in the mouth alone or descends into the throat, whether it leaves a cool open feeling there, and how long that persists. The second character, yun, is the same one used in poetry and music for rhyme or resonance, and the choice of word is doing real work — the category is about a quality of resonance rather than about a sensation with a location on a diagram. It is applied most in the assessment of aged sheng, of yancha and of Dan Cong. TeaHQ records it as a tradition-specific category and does not translate it into a mouthfeel term. Calling it 'throat-coating' would assert a physical mechanism, and calling it 'a long finish' would drop the spatial claim that is most of what the term is for. Both glosses circulate in English-language tea writing and both quietly replace the concept with something more familiar and less useful.
Which sense this is
Finish and throat. What happens after swallowing. Includes evaluative categories from Chinese tea assessment that have no equivalent term in European sensory language.
Not mouthfeel, though it is about sensation in the body rather than flavour. Mouthfeel in this vocabulary means texture in the mouth; hou yun makes a claim about the throat and about resonance that would be lost by filing it as texture.
Tradition-specific category. A category belonging to one tradition of tea assessment, with no equivalent term elsewhere. Recorded on its own terms rather than translated into one.
Whose category this is. Chinese-language tea assessment, particularly of aged sheng pu-erh, Wuyi yancha and Phoenix Dan Cong.
Where it comes from
- Observed, cause unsettled
Reported consistently by experienced drinkers within the tradition that uses the term, and not explained by any mechanism TeaHQ can state. Recorded as an evaluative category in use, not as a measured sensation.
Reliably observed and not explained. Recorded as unexplained rather than given a mechanism it has not earned.
Types: type-dark-tea, type-oolong-tea.
Not to be confused with
- Texture (Mouthfeel) — How the liquor moves in the mouth — silky, oily, thin or rough — as distinct from how much of it there seems to be.
What gets said that is not right
That it means a coating sensation in the throat. That is one thing English writing has taken it to mean; the term is broader and is used as a judgement about the tea's depth and resonance.
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.