The Water Had a Story Too…
I began the year learning about tea. Somewhere along the way, I realized I had overlooked the ingredient that filled almost every cup.
I filled notebooks with tasting notes. Some cups carried the fragrance of flowers long after they had been emptied. Others revealed a lingering sweetness that remained long after the final sip. A few surprised me with notes of citrus, warm spice, fresh grass, or the gentle drying sensation that tea drinkers describe as astringency.
Like many people discovering specialty tea, I assumed these experiences belonged entirely to the leaf.
After all, the tea had an origin. It came from a particular region, a particular harvest, and a particular maker.
The water, on the other hand, seemed almost invisible.
"For months I explored tea. Only recently did I begin exploring the ingredient that fills almost every cup."
It was simply there.
Or so I thought.
As the months passed, certain observations kept returning to my notebook.
A lingering sweetness that seemed to outlast the tea itself.
Floral fragrances that remained in an empty cup long after it had been set aside.
A gentle drying sensation that appeared briefly before disappearing.
I was becoming increasingly comfortable describing what I was experiencing.
What I wasn't asking was why.
More specifically, I wasn't asking what role the water might be playing in the experience.
For months I had focused on the leaf.
Its origin.
Its harvest.
Its maker.
The water seemed almost invisible.
Then, quite unexpectedly, I found myself looking at a laboratory report—not for tea, but for water.
Then another.
For the first time, I began reading descriptions attached to the ingredient that filled almost every cup I had brewed.
Looking back through my notes, three observations appeared again and again.
Lingering Sweetness
The first observation was lingering sweetness.
Not sweetness in the conventional sense. Not the sweetness of sugar or honey. Rather, the sensation that something remained after the tea itself had disappeared.
I began noticing it across different teas. Sometimes it appeared immediately after swallowing. Sometimes it emerged only as the liquor cooled. Occasionally it lingered for several minutes after the final sip.
What fascinated me was not the sweetness itself, but its persistence.
The tea was gone.
The cup was nearly empty.
Yet part of the experience remained.
Looking back, I realize that many of my tasting notes were describing more than the tea itself. They were describing what happened after the tea had been consumed.
If a tea continues speaking after the cup is empty, what exactly are we still tasting?
It was the first question that led me to look more closely at the water.
This is the first essay in an ongoing exploration of water, tea, and the relationship between the two.
