Smoke
Smoke from actual burning material — deliberate in Lapsang Souchong and in Tibetan brick tea, accidental everywhere else.
Smoke in tea comes from combustion products settling on the leaf, and the chemistry is well characterised: the phenolic compounds of wood smoke, guaiacol and syringol among them, are what the nose reads as smoky, and they are the same compounds that make smoked food smell smoked. In tea there are two quite different sources. The first is deliberate: pine smoking is a named production step for traditional Lapsang Souchong, in which the leaf is dried over resinous pine, and it produces a specific pine-resin smokiness rather than a general one. The second is incidental, from drying over open fires, and it is characteristic of teas made where that is how drying is done. Neither is a fault in a tea made that way. Smoke on a tea that is not supposed to have it is a different matter and usually means the drying fire was badly managed. Note that the catalogue currently spells this note two ways — 'woodsmoke' on four teas and 'wood smoke' on two — which is a normalisation issue rather than a distinction.
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
Phenolic compounds from wood combustion — guaiacol and syringol are the ones usually named — deposit on the leaf and carry the smoky aroma. This is the same family responsible for smoked food.
The chemical route is identified in the literature. Often a family of related compounds rather than one named molecule.
- Processing step
Pine smoking is a deliberate named step for traditional Lapsang Souchong, and gives a resinous smoke distinct from generic woodsmoke.
A named production step reliably produces it. A statement about practice, not about chemistry.
Processing: processing-pine-smoking. Types: type-black-tea.
- Processing step
Drying over open fire imparts it incidentally wherever that is the drying method, which is why it recurs on teas from places without electric drying.
A named production step reliably produces it. A statement about practice, not about chemistry.
Processing: process-drying. Types: type-dark-tea.
When it is a fault, and when it is not
Not a fault where it is intended: Lapsang Souchong, Tibetan and Sichuan brick tea, and anything dried over fire by tradition. A fault on a tea that is not supposed to have it, where it means the drying fire was poorly managed and the tea took smoke it was not meant to.
Not to be confused with
- Roast (Aroma) — Char and charcoal from heat applied to the leaf itself — not smoke, and not scorching either.
What gets said that is not right
That smoky and roasted are the same character at different strengths. Smoke is deposited from burning material outside the leaf; roast is a reaction inside it. A heavily roasted Wuyi oolong has no smoke in it at all.
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.
campfire · faint smoke · light pine smoke · light smoke · pine smoke · smoke · tar · wood smoke · woodsmoke
Teas whose notes resolve to this
Derived from the tasting notes on each tea, not assigned by hand.
- Anhua dark tea
- Bulang sheng pu-erh
- Ceylon green tea
- Gunpowder green tea
- Hei Zhuan
- Hojicha
- Hua Zhuan
- Huoshan Huang Da Cha
- Kang Zhuan
- Kyobancha
- Lao Ban Zhang sheng pu-erh
- Lapsang Souchong
- Nannuo sheng pu-erh
- Pinhead gunpowder
- Qing Zhuan
- Russian Caravan
- Samovar blend
- Shan Tuyet
- Sheng dragon ball
- Sheng maocha
- Sheng pu-erh (raw)
- Tian Jian
- Weishan Mao Jian
- Xinyang Mao Jian
- Yunnan green tea
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.