Since I had the opportunity to try two new types of Benifuuki (ベニふうき/紅富貴/sometimes written Benifūki) tea, I thought it would be fun (and hopefully educational) to do a deep dive into this cultivar. What is the Benifuuki Cultivar? Developed by the National Institute of Vegetable and Tea Science (野菜茶業研究所), the Benifuuki cultivar is a cross… Read More UniversiTEA: A Deep Dive into the Benifuuki tea cultivar
I’m back with another (and the last) tea made from the Benifuuki cultivar! This is a sencha from Nara and it’s very interesting. According to the booklet, this sencha “is intended to be functional as opposed to simply a delicious tea. The tea leaves used for manufacturing this rather crude looking green tea are from… Read More Tea Review: Benifuuki Sencha from The Tea Crane
Since I had three wakoucha (Japanese black teas) from The Tea Crane around AND I was still thinking about Toucha (having translated two toucha sessions), I thought it would be fun to combine the two! The video embedded is pretty much all I planned (although I did not plan to show everyone my messy kitchen)… Read More Trying a Wakoucha Toucha
I’ve generally been slowly and quietly drinking the teas in Lupicia’s Book of Tea, but I could not resist talking about this one. The English name is Sencha Fuji, but the Japanese name is 富士 香駿 (Fuji Koshun). Apparently, the 香駿/Koshun cultivar is a relatively rare cultivar, so I decided to dig around and see… Read More Introducing: Koshun (香駿) Cultivar
I’m always excited to try wakoucha (Japanese black teas) because they tend to be very unique. But I wasn’t prepared for the experience this tea gave me. But before I begin, here’s the description of the tea from The Tea Crane: Spring harvest Japanese ‘Wakōcha’ black tea from the Benifuki cultivar.Growing at an altitude of… Read More Tea Review: Yame Organic Benifuki Wakoucha by The Tea Crane
I got this (and a few tea samples) as part of The Tea Crane Kickstarter and was super excited to dive into it! For context, I read this after finishing the third report for the Japanese Tea Instructor course, so I was already in the frame of mind where I wanted to learn more about… Read More Tea Book Review: The Story of Japanese Tea by Tyas Sosen
I’m always happy to read books about tea, and finding free books about tea makes me even happier. A Bowl for a Coin by William Wayne Farris is a commodity history of tea in Japan, an angle of Japanese tea history that I’ve not really seen outside my Japanese tea instructor textbook (and even then,… Read More Tea Book Review: A Bowl for a Coin by William Wayne Farris
If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll probably have figured out that I’m back in the office now. And as it turns out, I left one packet of opened sencha in the tea drawer before I left! The tea definitely isn’t bad but it’s been six months (in my defence, I thought I’d be away… Read More I made my own Hojicha