Now that we’re in 2026, I’m slowly opening up some of the more unusual teas that I bought in 2025 (ignoring the even rarer teas that I bought in 2022 in SF!). Today’s tea is a white tea, which is a type of tea that I rarely see in Japan.
The dry leaves of the Hokumei white tea have a very intense fruity smell. While most white teas are made of buds, these are made of leaves that have been plucked and dried. You can see that these are whole leaves with minimal processing done to them, so I wonder if this fruity smell is a characteristic of the cultivar.
The first steep, which lasted for one minute, produced a cup of tea almost as light as water. Despite the strong fruity smell of the dry leaves, but the tea here was very mild. There are some floral notes, but it’s mostly water. And this was something that was consistent across the three times I had this tea – unless you’re going to steep the first cup for a very long time (probably 3 minutes or more), you won’t get much taste.
As the tea opens up, the colour develops into something more golden and the flavours start to come out. There is sweetness and a faint grassy note, as well as the fruity note that the dry leaves promised us. Because the flavours take a while to come out, I started using longer and longer steep times as well as hotter and hotter water, though I never got to the point where I started with freshly boiled water because I’m still worried about accidentally bringing out bitterness (and I don’t have enough of this to experiment freely).
The spent leaves showed that this white tea was one leaf, one bud, which is really good quality! That explains why it’s sold in such small quantities.
Overall thoughts
This was a very interesting tea – I think it would be great if you want to taste the hokumei cultivar with as little processing as possible. For comparison, I think it would have been fun to try this with the sencha and smoked tea versions, just to see if there are any similarities. Because this tea is so subtle, it’s a tea best enjoyed alone, without any snacks or any strong drinks just before you try this.