The post is finally here!!! I bought these smoked teas over a year ago and was waiting for a good time to sit down and drink them and… that time never really came. So I just bit the bullet and had them anyway (now I just have to do the same for the teas I bought in SF back in 2022!).

According to the product page, all three of these teas were smoked with chips from whisky ageing barrels in the Chichibu Distillery, near Takano-en and Hiraoka-en (the tea farms that produced this tea). I have to say upfront that I’m not a whisky person at all, so I won’t be able to talk about the whiskey barrels and what effect it has on the tea.

Okumidori Smoked Black Tea by Takano-en

It’s a light brown tea liquor with a very faint smoky smell. The tea also smelt a bit savoury and I found it to be a lightly smoked, slightly savoury tea that made me feel like I was drinking a snack. There is a bit of a woody note when the tea has cooled down, which I thought was interesting since the savoury note had disappeared.

The smoky note was really only here in the first steep. The second cup of tea was sweeter and a bit woody, but not smoky to me. The smoky note here seems to result in a very delicate, ephemeral cup of black tea.

Okumidori Smoked Green Tea by Takano-en

Oddly enough, I felt the green tea had the strongest smoky note of the three! While it looks like a regular cup of green tea, the smoky note was strong and distinct. Oddly enough, I didn’t get any grassy or sweet notes – the dominant note was the smoky and savoury one, much like how the first cup of the smoked black tea version was smoky and savoury.

The second cup of tea was lighter (though the smoky note remained) but the third cup was a bit bitter and not very pleasant. I really think this additional process changed the tea quite a bit – I normally can steep the green tea multiple times before it reaches the end.

Hokumei Smoked Black Tea by Hiraoka-en

At first glance, the Hokumei smoked black tea is similar to the Okumidori black tea, this was a light brown tea liquor with a delicate smoky note. The aftertaste was stronger compared to the okumidori and I thought this wasn’t as savoury; it was slightly sweet as well, and I wonder if these differences are due to cultivar or due to the fact it’s from a different farm.

The savoury note really only emerged in the second steep, which meant that both black teas had similar notes but at different stages (the sweetness only really emerged in the second cup for the Okumidori). But both black teas seem to have a limit of two steeps – the third steep really wasn’t worth drinking at all!

Overall Thoughts

It seems like smoking the teas mean that you can only steep them once or twice, which was a bit of a surprise for me. And while I expected smoking to give the teas a strong smoky flavour, I didn’t expect them to be so delicate – the smoky note, while distinct, isn’t overpowering and the teas feel delicate because of it.

Would I get this again? I’m a bit torn – I’m not generally a fan of smoky teas but these were interesting. I don’t really see myself reaching for them on a daily basis, but it would be something fun to let friends try or to blend with other black teas to see what happens.