While Japanese green tea and matcha are rapidly gaining in popularity, the information available about the product in English is still scarce.
As a long term resident in Japan, certified tea ceremony instructor and Japanese tea sommelier with specialisation in organic and artisan teas, I have produced a book that will fill this gap.
The consideration of the manufacturer is the ease of cultivation and harvest of the bushes he chooses. In addition, the consideration for the major industry is a matter of how they can develop a generic flavor in the tea.Their interest is the facilitation of mass production for a commodity with equal and predictable flavor. This flavor must just sufficiently appeal to the greater public, but nothing more.
The straw canopy The straw canopy [本簾被覆; honzu hifuku] is mainly used for the cultivation of shade grown tea bushes used to produce gyokuro and tencha. On top of a shelf-like structure traditionally fashioned out of wood – but contemporarily for ease-of-labor reasons also to be found in stone – a layer of bamboo-reed blinds …
METHODS FOR SHADING THE TEA BUSHES DURING CULTIVATION Read More »
The tea bush is known to produce amino acids during tea cultivation. These are transferred to the fresh buds for their initial development. When the sunlight reaches those buds, photosynthesis occurs and causes these amino acids to change into catechin. While amino acids are chemical components that are responsible for a sweet, umami flavor, catechin components imbue the final product with a rather bitter taste.
Contemporarily, Japan is renown for its green tea. Matcha is overtaking the world as a ‘power food’, and is rapidly gaining preference with the more health conscious among us. Gyokuro is favored for its deep and varied taste and abundance of umami flavor, and Sencha is known as the most eminent of Japanese teas in …
THE EFFICIENCY OF MACHINES VS. OUR PREFERENCE OF TASTE Read More »
An exclusive selection of top-grade naturally-grown, traditional Japanese teas by tea-master and organic tea sommelier Tyas Sōsen; first certified Belgian Japanese tea instructor and Tea-ceremony teacher in the Enshū school.
