Tasting Ceylon Tea: aesthetic judgment beyond “good taste”

Abstract

Tea production comprises concerted acts of discernment—from plucking and processing tealeaves, to tasting, blending, and valuing tea—the outcome of which ranges from the ordinary to the singular. Tracing the tension between the two, this article cast a closer look at how aesthetic judgments are made and shared, and the ways in which they are incorporated into the production of mass market commodities. The aim of this paper is to highlight the nuanced practices of aesthetic judgment, which, no matter how indispensable to the production of an ostensibly ordinary good, are obscured by the widespread association of taste with distinguished consumption—the conflation, in other words, of aesthetic judgment with “good taste.” Based on ethnographic research conducted with producers and professional tea-tasters across the Ceylon Tea industry, it argues for a broader understanding of the judgment of taste as an enactment of sensory labor irreducible to commonly held categories of distinction.