“Taiwan tea, the world’s fragrance”. The Tea Industry Improvement Center of the Council of Agriculture created a Taiwanese tea flavor system in 2018, called “Taiwan Tea Flavor Wheel 1.0”. 495 samples of Taiwanese tea were passed through tea tasting and tea making experts. Analyze and form a set of indexes, with the purpose of establishing a common language among tea tasters, and looking internationally, marketing Taiwan with the fragrance of tea.

“After you have done it, you can’t push it at all,” Su Zongzhen said frankly. The colleagues in the tea-changing field hope to develop a flavor system 2.0 that is closer to the “user needs”, propose to us for cooperation, and hold a collaboration meeting in March this year.

My first instinctive reaction is that you have to remove the words “copyright, reprints must be investigated” on the flavor wheel to be open.

On the day of the collaboration meeting, we specially designed the tea-drinking session so that anyone who is familiar with tea tasting can start from the sensory relaxation of tea color, tea aroma, and tea taste, and create a real user “experience”. Let everyone naturally project their needs and think together what kind of flavor description can show the characteristics of Taiwanese tea?

In order to prevent participants from being limited to imagination by designing a “wheel”-like flavor system diagram, we changed the core issue from improving the flavor wheel to a more unrestricted “systematic flavor description” to allow participants You can “break the tool framework” with peace of mind and proceed completely from your own needs.

Collaborative meeting with Taiwanese Tea

The composition of the participants, except for the tea cooperating with the tea field In addition to merchants, tea farmers, and tea masters, baristas and wine appraisers were also invited, because these two fields have already established a systematic flavor vocabulary. In addition, people who sign up online, as well as game design and interactive design experts we invited separately.

The table was filled with vocabulary libraries describing the flavor of tea, colored paper, brushes, pasting and pasting materials, and under the guidance of the table leader, from simple vocabulary increase and decrease, to a six-wheel-in-one rotating roulette, and even It is a game interactive App architecture provided to tea merchants and consumers, and the creativity of all parties has been stacked to produce amazing results.

The coordinator felt after the meeting: “My biggest gain is to understand that you can’t be greedy.” It means that the educational flavor perception construction and consumer experience guidance should not be mixed in the same tool. In line with different usage scenarios, multiple generations.

Chief Su shared his experience with other ministries: it is not easy to get a true and comprehensive idea by asking consumers or producers one-way. Through the two-way guidance of the open government, stakeholders can get together and get a wide range of opinions quickly.

The flavor wheel looks like a small tool, but it carries the ambition to light up Taiwan’s international status. Taiwan’s tea flavor system has changed from “tea changing the market” to “everyone’s business.” At the end of this year, the public will see the academic version of “Flavour System 2.0” and the comprehensive version close to consumers. The digitization of the Taiwanese tea flavor database will also be launched for more people to add value to use.

When the flavor language of Taiwanese tea comes from the general consensus of everyone drinking tea, and not just the official definition of the tea change, we have stood firm in the footsteps of “Taiwan tea culture is inclusive, and the fragrance of tea is in line with the world.”