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they taste. There may be people that make a living teaching how to perform the tea ceremony, but it would certainly be a rare thing to be paid for tasting the tea itself. Furthermore, at wine tasting events with many different wines, tasters often spit their wine out so that they are not affected by the alcohol in the wine. Until perhaps the last few tastes, the wine is not really drunk at all, only tasted, literally.

To really understand the difference between the two, try imagining what would happen if the drinks were switched. The tea ceremony could go on with wine instead of tea. The ritual would be the same; the contents of the cup would not severely affect the process or the general experience. However, try drinking tea with the intent of categorizing and analyzing it the way tasters do wine. It would not work very well.

From these comparisons, we can make the generalizations that the East has more of a private, service-oriented mindset, focused on the whole of a shared experience, while the West has more of a public, business-oriented mindset, focused on isolating aspects of individual experiences. The idea of only tasting one's drink instead of actually drinking it has some overtones of being offered something and then having it snatched away. It is certainly a practical consideration where alcohol is concerned. However, where the tea ceremony allows one to drink a cup of tea fully and really enjoy it for the experience, the wine tasting seems to force one to spend a few moments on a number of different things and never really enjoy any of them.

Learn more about this author, Reiko Yukawa.
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