Aroma characters and tea

[Balthazar]

Last year a video featuring Timothy Hsu of the Mandarin’s Tea Room was published on the food section of NYTimes.

It's a nice video which only piqued my interest in Hsu's establishment (and teas!). One of the claims he makes in the video particularly caught my attention, and when I recalled it today, after re-watching the video, I tried to find out more about it, without much success.

If you start from 1.40 in the video, Hsu claims that wine has around 400 to 500 "characters/aroma characters", whereas the corresponding numbers for coffee and tea are 700 to 800 and "1200 and up" respectively. (Chocolate and cigars are also mentioned, Hsu suggests they have a similar number of aromas as coffee.)

I was wondering whether anyone has more information about this. Is it actually true? I don't know the first thing about how one measures the number of aromas in different plants/products, but I find it very interested, and I would not have guessed that wine (I'm assuming he means red) came out that much lower than coffee, for instance.

What are your thoughts about this?

[Mrs. Chip]

Tim is one of our vendor members. I don't recall anytime he gave us information that he couldn't substantiate. He may just pop in to answer you.

Have a wonderful TeaDay.

[Balthazar]

Yup, I know him to be very knowledgeable from his writings here and elsewhere. I don't really doubt the truth value of the claims, but I am interested in finding documentation and more information.

[Drax]

I wonder how many different "characters" that a human can actually distinguish....?

[entropyembrace]

I wonder how many different "characters" that a human can actually distinguish....?

1 trillion

http://www.nature.com/news/human-nose-c ... rs-1.14904

[William]

I wonder how many different "characters" that a human can actually distinguish....?

1 trillion

http://www.nature.com/news/human-nose-c ... rs-1.14904

Only?

[Drax]

Wow... that's a bit more than I imagined...

[kyarazen]

I wonder how many different "characters" that a human can actually distinguish....?

1 trillion

http://www.nature.com/news/human-nose-c ... rs-1.14904

haha.. anyone into the shapist versus molecular vibration debates?

[Tead Off]

Wow... that's a bit more than I imagined...

Yes, I thought it was slightly less.

[kiwi303]

so what does a bloodhound smell?

5 trillion?

Or just the same 1 trillion, just rather better?

[BW85]

so what does a bloodhound smell?

5 trillion?

Or just the same 1 trillion, just rather better?

I imagine a lot! Plus dogs can pick out and distinguish between multiple overlapping smells simultaneously, while we are limited to one at a time!