Terms: Floral, Honey, Fruity, Fresh, Downy, and Orchid Aromas
The aroma of young raw tea is pu'er at its brightest and most alive. Aroma terms for this stage mostly relate to flowers, honey, and fruit. Learn these terms, and you'll be able to describe a young tea's personality when you drink it.
Floral Aroma
What it is: A general term for aromas reminiscent of flowers, fresh and lifted.
Which flowers?: The floral aroma in pu'er usually isn't one specific flower; tea lovers describe it based on how it feels to them. Common descriptions include:
- Orchid: Quiet and elegant; see "Orchid Aroma" below.
- Wildflowers: Like a mix of small flowers in the mountains, light and natural.
- Gardenia and white flowers: A richer white-flower scent that occasionally appears in some young teas.
Floral aroma is more pronounced in spring tea and tea from higher-elevation gardens, and well-controlled pan-firing temperatures also play a part. After a few years of storage, floral aroma usually turns into honey aroma, and then slowly into aged aroma.
Example: A freshly pressed spring tea: lift the gaiwan lid, and a fresh floral aroma greets you like walking into a mountain forest in spring. That's floral aroma.
Honey Aroma
What it is: A sweet scent like honey, warm and rounded, the kind that makes you think "sweet" just from smelling it.
Where you'll find it: Raw tea from many regions has it; examples commonly cited in the tea world are teas from around Bingdao and Yiwu. It's also very common for floral aroma to turn into honey aroma after young tea is stored for 2–3 years.
How it differs from sweet aroma: Honey aroma has the nectar-like character particular to honey; sweet aroma is a general term for sweet smells, used more often for ripe tea.
Example: A Bingdao raw tea dragon pearl whose lid aroma carries a honey-like sweetness once brewed, with the cup bottom still sweet after it cools: that's honey aroma. Try experiencing it with Bingdao Old Village Dragon Pearls.
Fruity Aroma
What it is: An aroma reminiscent of fruit. Young tea mostly has crisp fruity notes like green plum or green apple; after some transformation, sweeter notes like ripe fruit and dried fruit appear.
Where you'll find it: Young raw tea and raw tea in early transformation; teas from some regions are especially fruity.
Example: A raw tea kept 3 years that smells sweet when hot, like ripe apricots or dried fruit: that's fruity aroma.
Fresh Aroma (Qingxiang)
What it is: A fresh, pure, gentle aroma that smells clean and pleasant, with no off-notes. It's one of the basic aroma types of young tea, and "fresh aroma" (清香) and "fresh and pure" (清純) are also common evaluation terms.
How fresh aroma differs from a grassy taste: This is the most commonly confused pair.
| Fresh aroma (清香) | Grassy taste (青味) | |
|---|---|---|
| Sensation | Fresh, clean, pleasant | Raw and green, like raw grass or freshly cut grass |
| Source | The tea's own aroma | Insufficient pan-firing, so the grassy smell of fresh leaves wasn't removed |
| Rating | Positive | Negative (a defect) |
| Change | Turns into honey and aged aromas in storage | May fade in storage, but often stays harsh |
Simply put: fresh aroma is like morning air; a grassy taste is like a freshly mown lawn. The effect of pan-firing on shaiqing maocha is covered in Pan-Firing and Rolling.
Downy Aroma (Haoxiang)
What it is: The aroma of teas with many buds and visible white down: delicate, sweet, with a warm scent a bit like dry fuzz.
Where you'll find it: Raw teas made mainly from buds or with a high proportion of buds, such as bud teas and tender spring teas. The term is also often used for white tea.
Example: A bud-rich loose tea that has a fine sweet scent even when smelled dry, and a soft, delicate aroma once brewed: that's downy aroma.
Orchid Aroma (Lanxiang)
What it is: An aroma like orchids: quiet, elegant, and lasting; not intense, but very distinctive.
Which teas is it usually associated with?: The tea world most often links orchid aroma with tea from Jingmai Mountain; "orchid aroma" has become almost synonymous with Jingmai tea. Teas from other regions may also carry orchid aroma; this is just a common impression. Jingmai Mountain is introduced in Jingmai Mountain.
Example: A Jingmai spring tea that, when smelled cold, still has a quiet floral scent at the bottom of the cup, not a cloying flower but a delicate orchid note: that's orchid aroma.
Where These Aromas Come From
The floral and fruity aromas of young tea are related to volatile compounds such as alcohols, esters, and aldehydes. Their amounts are affected by variety, elevation, season, the tenderness of the pluck, and pan-firing technique. In storage they slowly oxidize and change, so young tea's floral aroma usually doesn't last forever, which is part of what makes raw tea's "changing" so interesting. The compounds are introduced in Aroma Compounds.
Aroma Changes Across Infusions
With the same young raw tea, the first few infusions have the most lifted aroma, with pronounced floral notes; in the middle infusions the floral notes weaken and honey and sweet notes emerge; in the later infusions the aroma fades into a clean sweetness. So when describing aroma, note which infusion it was, so comparisons are accurate.
How to Practice Recognizing Them
- When drinking young tea, smell the lid aroma, liquor aroma, and cup-bottom aroma, and note each separately.
- Use a young tea with a pronounced aroma as a baseline, such as a raw tea known for honey aroma; once you know it well, compare other teas against it.
- Pay attention to season: smell spring and autumn teas from the same region side by side, and the difference is obvious.
FAQ
Which flowers is raw pu'er's floral aroma like? Mostly not one specific flower; common descriptions include orchid, wildflowers, and white flowers, depending on how it feels to you.
What is honey aroma? A sweet scent like honey, often used for raw tea from around Bingdao and Yiwu; floral aroma also often turns into honey aroma after young tea is kept 2–3 years.
Which teas is orchid aroma usually associated with? Most often Jingmai Mountain tea, but teas from other regions may also carry orchid aroma.
What is downy aroma? The delicate sweet scent of teas with many buds and visible white down.
How does fresh aroma differ from a grassy taste? Fresh aroma is clean and fresh, a positive description; a grassy taste is like raw grass, usually from insufficient pan-firing, and is a defect.