Wood
The band that runs from green stem to old dry timber — and one of the words on the standard defect list that is usually not a defect here.
Wood covers a wide range in this catalogue and the modifiers do most of the work: green wood on young sheng and some oolong, warm wood on roasted and aged material, old and dry wood on long-aged tea, damp and wet wood on dark tea stored humid. Forty-eight usages across nine spellings. 'Woody' appears on standard tea defect lists, and that needs qualifying rather than repeating. In a fresh green or a first-flush black, woodiness means coarse mature leaf or stalk that should have been sorted out, and it is a fault. In an aged sheng, an aged white or a well-roasted Wuyi oolong, wood is the expected character and its absence would mean the tea had not developed. The word is the same and the judgement is opposite, which is why the fault status here is context-dependent rather than inherited from the defect list.
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
Ageing is the main route to the warm and old end of the band, in both sheng and white tea.
A named production step reliably produces it. A statement about practice, not about chemistry.
Processing: process-ageing, process-basket-ageing. Types: type-dark-tea, type-white-tea.
- Processing step
At the green end it usually reports material: coarse leaf and stalk that sorting and stalk-picking exist to remove.
A named production step reliably produces it. A statement about practice, not about chemistry.
Processing: processing-sorting-and-grading, processing-s32-stalk-picking.
When it is a fault, and when it is not
A fault in fresh green and lightly oxidised tea, where it means coarse leaf or stalk that should have been sorted out. Expected and positive in aged sheng, aged white and roasted oolong, where its absence would mean the tea had not developed. The wet and damp end shades towards the musty fault and is judged on whether the smell is clean.
Not to be confused with
- Musty (Aroma) — The smell of a tea stored damp — distinct from the earthy character of a properly aged one, and the distinction is not academic.
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.
bark · damp wood · dark wood · dry wood · green wood · old wood · warm wood · wet wood · wood
Teas whose notes resolve to this
Derived from the tasting notes on each tea, not assigned by hand.
- Aged Baozhong
- Aged Gong Mei
- Aged Liu Bao
- Aged Shou Mei
- Aged white tea cake
- Anamalai tea
- Anhua dark tea
- Argentine black tea
- Assam first flush
- Atherton Tablelands tea
- Ba Xian
- Bitaco tea
- Cameron Highlands black tea
- Cameroonian black tea
- Chen Xiang Tie Guan Yin
- Cheongtaejeon
- Darjeeling monsoon flush
- Darjeeling muscatel
- Darjeeling second flush
- Gui Hua Xiang
- Hei Zhuan
- Hua Juan Cha
- Hua Zhuan
- Jingmai sheng pu-erh
- Kandy tea
- Kang Zhuan
- Kuki hojicha
- Light-fermented shou pu-erh
- Liu Bao
- Magwa tea
- Menghai shou pu-erh
- Miang
- Myanmar black tea
- Nannuo sheng pu-erh
- Nepal black tea
- Qian Liang Cha
- Qing Zhuan
- Sabaragamuwa tea
- Sheng dragon ball
- Sheng pu-erh (raw)
- Shou Mei
- Shou pu-erh (ripe)
- Shou pu-erh brick
- Song Zhong Dan Cong
- Tan Bei oolong
- Tian Jian
- Tuocha
- Turkish çay
- Wuyi Shui Xian
- Yi Hong
- Yongchun Fo Shou
- Zhangping Shui Xian
- Zhenghe Silver Needle
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.