Japanese Sencha Tea

Taste:

Japanese sencha tea is a great refreshing drink. Enjoyed by 150 million people every day, it is smooth and cleans the palate with a hint of sweetness.

This tea is pleasantly brisk, and the fragrance is a subtle grassy-floral blend.

Appearance:

The leaves are large and highly uniform. The color is a rich shiny emerald.

The liquor is a bright lime yellow-green.

Special Occasions:

Most people who drink Japanese sencha tea will drink 5 to 10 cups throughout the day. This is the tea variety that clears the brain, cleans and normalizes the body, and lets people sort things out.

Japanese sencha tea is an easy way to take a short break and gain a better perspective on life’s daily problems.

Serving Suggestions:

This Japanese green tea works well with foods that are complex and strongly flavored. It’s a great choice with curry, garlic, and light Mexican foods.

It can be paired with foods like chicken, turkey, fish, and seafood. Sencha’s unique taste also shines with vegetables, and vegetarian meals like vegetarian pizza.

You can serve it with heavier desserts like cakes, pies, and pastries made of fruit, cheese, and cream.

People who are creative with food prefer sencha with milk chocolate desserts rather than dark chocolate, but that is always a personal decision.

Preparation:

Use one teaspoon of Japanese sencha tea per cup.

Steeping time can vary from one minute to four minutes, and water temperature can vary from 160F to 190F, according to your tastes.

The higher the grade of tea, the lower the water temperature, and the shorter the steeping time.

You can also get several infusions from a higher grade.

As with all green teas, use a high quality spring water.

Never use chlorinated water to make any tea that you drink and never add milk or sugar to high quality green tea.

History:

Buddhist monks brought the first tea seeds to Japan in 805 A.D., but it was when the Zen priest Eisai brought large teagardens to the Uji area near Kyoto that the heart of Japanese green tea was born.

Early tea processing was limited to steaming only.

Japanese sencha tea was not developed until 1738 when a merchant named Soen Nagatani perfected the processing with steaming, hand-rolling, and pan-firing or drying.

Currently, more than 75% of all tea produced in Japan is made into Japanese sencha tea.

Processing:

Japanese teagardens cultivate the plants side-by-side in very long rows around two feet high and five feet wide.

The plants are left in full sunshine, unlike the shaded matcha and gyokuro.

Beginning in the spring, plucking machines gather the leaves four times a year with 45 day intervals.

The leaves are cleaned, sorted, steamed, dried in a hot air tunnel, then rolled into a needle shape and dried again.

Some of the most prized leaves are reserved for hand plucking and processing.

This loose leaf green will be used only for competition grade senchas.

Grades:

The highest grades of Japanese sencha are generally from the earliest spring pluckings and are hand-crafted. They will have the most uniform leaf presentation, and the tea will have the smoothest, cleanest taste.

The Yame region is known for a needle shaped dried leaf, and Kyushu is known for a comma-shaped dried leaf, similar to the famous Chinese Chun Mee tea, one of the eyebrow teas.

Origin:

The first Japanese green teagardens were in the Uji area, but now it is grown around Tokyo and throughout the southern islands.

Ancient gardens from a thousand years ago near Kyoto are still producing tea every year.

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