The Language of Tea

Develop the vocabulary to describe tea with clarity and imagination and learn to express yourself around the sensory aspects of tea across cultures and contexts.

Outline

Learn to express the taste, feeling and stories of the teas you drink and develop the language to describe them with accuracy and flair. Whether it is to present or promote tea – or to extend your own vocabulary for your personal confidence, this unit offers practical tools to develop your fluency in the language of tea.

This is an important skill if you work in tasting, service, writing or education, you’ll explore how to describe flavour, aroma, body and mouthfee. You’ll learn to adjust tone and register- moving from formal to casual, poetic to precise – and how to adapt your language for different audiences and purposes.

The unit includes sensory exercises, structured vocabulary development, and sample formats for descriptions, menus and customer conversations. It also explores language differences across cultures, and how to translate or adapt tea terms across languages and traditions.

Live Q&A Session
You will have the opportunity to join a 1 hour live session with our Tea Specialist where you can bring taste and language together and practice what you’ve learnt.

On completion
At the end of the unit, you’ll complete a multiple-choice quiz.

Qualification
When you have passed the MCQs you’ll receive an OCN London digital badge to demonstrate your competence in the Language of Tea.

This is a core unit in the Tea Sommelier Award

Snapshot

Other units in Tea Sommelier Award

In order to achieve the Tea Sommelier Award you must complete all four core units, one optional unit and a Final Project. Some of the other units are below.

Sustainability in the Tea Value Chain

Explore how tea is grown, processed, traded and consumed through the lens of sustainability and learn what it takes to make tea production fair, resilient and future-ready.

Mastering Afternoon Tea

Get inside the rituals, service, business and design of a successful afternoon tea. From scones to strategy, explore how this tradition evolved and how to make it work today.

Matcha Power: how to harness it

Matcha is a power-packed, powdered tea that has spread from its Zen roots and reverential status in Japan to fast-moving cafés around the world. Discover the background – from cultivation and processing to modern creative preparation.

The Language of Tea