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换个杯子
让茶的味道更丰富You've ever noticed how your teaware, or glassware for wine affect the taste of your tea.
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换个杯子 让茶的味道更丰富
来源：Austin Yoder 2013/11/01 发表于 The News Lens 关键评论网
Photo Credit: 陈镜 CHEN-CHING 翻译／红凯利
会喝酒的人对于酒杯形状和材质是非常敏感的，不同的形状、不同的材质可是会大大影响你「如何喝酒」。来自奥地利的Riedel，以研发和生产玻璃器皿闻名全球。为了带出葡萄酒芳醇的味道，Riedel不但设计并生产许多别于一般制式化的玻璃杯，更为了不同酒种，而有专属设计款。以香槟为例，玻璃杯以高窄为佳；但若是西拉Syrah（原产地为法国罗讷河谷地北部），适合的玻璃杯则需边缘较厚、偏碗状尤佳。
而茶具之于茶叶是否等同玻璃杯之于酒类的影响，我想答案是毋庸置疑。就和玻璃杯影响酒一样，茶具对于茶，也是有相当程度的影响力。
但「茶具」有趣多了！怎么说呢？酒类向来只有使用玻璃杯，但喝茶的工具却不局限玻璃，更包含陶瓷、陶土等不同材质。
不同茶具到底带来什么影响呢？首先，让我们从杯子形状着手好了。
窄口杯
杯口形状会影响喝茶，也会影响如何「闻」茶。芝加哥嗅觉与味觉治疗研究基金会指出，百分之九十的人，喝茶其实是并不是真正地喝茶，而是闻茶。和酒杯一样，不尽相同的杯缘厚度以及开口角度，其实都深深影响着如何「闻茶」。
假设今天使用又高又窄，品酒会中的专门杯子，气味会非常浓郁且集中地从杯口直接窜入鼻中，这也是香气杯（或称闻香杯）设计为又高又窄样式的原因。br<> 闻香杯，顾名思义，会让嗅觉体验提升到某种程度，进而让品茶者拥有不同程度的味觉以及嗅觉体验，不觉得是一款非常酷炫的设计吗？因此想要一个完整的品茶体验，一定要使用闻香杯，不仅集中香味，也会防止空气快速渗入茶中而影响茶的浓醇度。
宽口杯
如果嗅觉不是你最看重的部分，而是喝下去的口感，那么宽口杯将会是你最佳选择了。
大部分的宽口杯，从底部开始，开口便会较大。这样设计是为让热空气与茶香味快速结合，空气中便会弥漫着迷人的茶香。这时候，如果有传统天目杯的话，就更好不过了。天目杯会让整个人感到无比放松，且更能细细地去感受空气中那股温暖味道。 光Reidel所出产的整套杯具就包含八个或十二个不同的形状，甚至更多。喜欢各式各样葡萄酒杯的朋友，以及了解酒杯、茶具对味道有着极大影响的朋友，一定都知道杯子形状是一门深奥的学问吧。
除了形状，杯子制成材质也是另外一门高深艺术。以下我将探讨玻璃、陶瓷以及陶土茶杯的不同。但这三种材质有何不同呢？最大不同之处就在于表面孔隙的多寡，而多寡也会影响表面粗糙手感的程度。
玻璃杯：表面光滑无瑕疵、无孔隙
为何大家喝酒都使用玻璃杯呢？视觉上，玻璃杯表面是如此光滑无瑕以及晶莹剔透，人们可直接看到酒类在杯里赏心悦目的色泽，味道也不会因为玻璃材质的不同而变调，可谓是兼具视觉、味觉及嗅觉的材质。
陶瓷杯：表面有肉眼看不见的细小孔隙
陶瓷杯，最常见的茶杯款式。陶瓷杯表面会涂上一层釉料，使其看起来光滑，但与玻璃杯相比，并不是完全地光滑无暇，还是会有一些些看不太见的小孔隙以及釉表的凹痕。因为这些凹痕、孔隙，在茶倒进杯里、喝进嘴里等摇动杯子的过程中，会冲撞出不同的气味以及口感，就好比波浪撞击岩石，会冲撞出一朵朵绮丽浪花的美好瞬间一般！唯一区别只在于茶不是咸咸的海水罢了。和玻璃杯相比，在陶瓷茶杯里的「撞击」会带给你有别以往的感官体验喔！
陶土杯：表面充满凹凸不平的孔隙
由陶土所制成的杯子最大不同之处在于其表面并非光滑无瑕，而是充满许多凹凸不平的孔隙，而这些孔隙最大的功能就和皮肤上的毛孔一样，对于「茶的呼吸」是非常重要的。大大小小的孔隙或许是制作时所产生的碰伤、压痕或是刮痕等。当使用陶土茶杯时，装在杯里的液体在饮用时，会不时碰撞这些孔隙，就像刀子和匕首在切茶。因此，饮用时，无论嗅觉或味觉，都将释放出更多芳香。
如何选用适合的茶杯
分辨茶杯材质基本上是容易的（虽然有时候有点难），毕竟表面如此不同。但是在茶叶、温度以及其他条件都相同下，使用不同材质的茶壶所酿出的口感截然不同。我们发现相较玻璃杯及陶瓷杯而言，陶壶所冲泡出的味道复杂许多，不仅仅是茶味，更包含许多绝妙，无法以言语表达的口感。
但是，在什么时间、情况下品茗，对于茶杯的材质可是会有不同的选择。初尝新茶时，玻璃杯或许会是第一选择，为了体验最原始的「茶」。而在展示杯子材质对于茶有何者影响时，想当然尔，会使用三种材质的杯子、茶壶。但一般而言，我和朋友、家人品茶时，陶土制的杯具是首选，其冲泡出的茶，口感可是非常具有层次感。
每种材质所带出的茶各有风味，不分轩轾，都值得品茗的人细细品尝！
How does teaware influence your tea?
People who drink wine will understand that the shape, and material of your glass influence how you taste a beverage. Riedel, the Austrian glassware company has built a relatively large commercial empire by researching and producing glassware that helps to bring out the best in each varietal of grape. Champagne glasses are tall and narrow, and syrah glasses are wider rimmed, and more bowl shaped.
One of the questions we get on a semi-regular basis is whether or not teaware makes as much of a difference for the taste of tea as glassware makes for wine.
The answer is a definite yes, for many of the same reasons that shape matters for glassware. What's interesting about teaware is that it comes in a variety of shapes and sizes, as well as different materials. Where most wine is consumed from glass, tea can be consumed from glass, ceramics, clay, etc.
So what factors in teaware matter?
The Shape of Your Cup
Narrow Rimmed
The shape of your cup influences the way that you taste tea, because it controls the way in which you smell your tea. The Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago says that 90% of what is perceived as taste is actually smell. Just like with wine cups, the size of the rim of your cup, the angle at which it opens from its base, whether it is flared outward or inward, all affect how you taste.
If you're drinking out of a tall and narrow teacup, something more like a whisky tasting glass, the smell will be funneled in a very concentrated channe
l straight into your nose. Incidentally, this is why aroma cups, or 闻香杯 are tall and narrow, and not flared at all.
Aroma cups are paired with drinking cups because they are helpful to smell the tea up front, though they don't allow for much air to mix with your tea, which you really want for a full on tasting experience.
Isn't it cool that there are cups specifically designed to help us break the smelling and tasting experiences down separately?
Wide Rimmed
When you aren't specifically focused on smelling, and you're ready to dive into taste, a wide rimmed tea cup or tea bowl is called for.
A wider rimmed cup, something which opens up from the base at a rapid rate, allowing hot air carrying scent from the infused tea to diffuse leisurely through the air. With a traditional tien mu bei (天目杯), you'll get a more relaxed, more gentle sense of the scent of a tea.
Where a full set of stems from Reidel might give you eight or twelve shapes to play with, there are essentially unlimited shapes and sizes of tea cups. Those who love the accessory side of wine and understand how important your wine tools can be for your end results will be in heaven when they begin exploring the wide wide world of teaware.
Outside of shape, the material of a teacup makes a tremendous difference as well.
Material: Glass Vs. Ceramics Vs. Clay
The major difference between these three types of materials is their degree of imperfection.
Glass
Glass is almost perfectly smooth, which is why it is used to consume wine. With a perfectly smooth surface, the liquid of your tea or wine has nothing to bump against, and it smell and flavors remain fairly compacted. It is a neutral material.
Ceramic
Ceramic teacups, like the white one above, are the most basic type of teacup you can find. Because ceramics are glazed, they are also very smooth, though they have imperfections – tiny bumps and dents in the surface of their glaze coating. The tiny imperfections in the surface of this glaze mean that tea has to bump into, and rub up against many micro-sized obstacles on the journey from inside the cup to inside your mouth. As it bumps into and tears up against these tiny imperfections, the liquid opens up. Sort of like waves crashing into rocks, where the water sprays everywhere and foams up into whitecaps. The difference being that instead of ocean water, it's the smell and flavor crashing into and opening up against the ceramic walls of your teacup, giving you a slightly more open sensory experience than you would have with glass.
Clay
The most interesting aspect of clay teaware is that it is porous. Just like the skin on your body has pores, allowing you to sweat, clay has pores which help your tea to breathe, in a manner of speaking.
These pores are tiny imperfections in the surface of the clay – holes, bumps, indentations, scratches etc. When you pick up a clay tea cup and put it up to your mouth, the liquid inside has to crash and bump into these small imperfections. Because the imperfections in clay are much larger than those in the glaze coating on a ceramic teacup, you might think about the process like a bunch of little knives and daggers cutting into the liquid surface of your tea, ripping it open, releasing more smell, more flavor right into your nose and mouth.
Although none of the imperfections in a teacup made of glass, ceramic, or clay are visible (or easily visible), the difference can be quite striking when you taste the same tea side by side. When we taste through the same tea brewed for the same amount of time at the same temparature, where the only varaible is the material the teacup is made from – what we find is that we get a much bigger, fuller, more open aroma and flavor from the clay teacup than we do from a glass or ceramic teacup. Those imperfections in the clay help us to experience a more robust mouthfeel, and more extended finish in our tea.
These differences have an effect on what we use to taste tea at different times and under different contexts. When we're tasting a new tea to score up for the first time, we use glass as we want to experience just the tea itself. When we're doing a demonstration of different teaware for our friends we use all three. Generally if we're drinking at home for pleasure or with our families, we use clay, as it gives us the type of tasting experience we most enjoy.
All types have their place, and are worth exploring.
Question of the Day
We'll be writing up a detailed description of a recent tasting we did with a local ceramic teaware artist soon, but the question of the day today is whether or not you've ever noticed how your teaware, or glassware for wine affect the taste of your tea or wine?
Sourse：Austin Yoder 2013/11/01 The News Lens
Photo Credit: CHEN-CHING 陈镜