Description
Description | 詳細
Japan’s tea farmers often like to drink less refined versions of their own tea production, while the minutely sorted and carefully cultivar-combined teas are primarily reserved for their customers. Chiran Farmer’s Sencha is precisely an example of such a traditional farmer’s tea: a single-cultivar unsorted aracha, or ‘raw tea’, which has simply been completed with a well-executed chūbi hi-ire firing.
One finds, in other words, both stems and small-leaf material included here along with the more well-preserved needle-shaped Yabukita spring leaves that one normally would expect from the tea’s moderate chūmushi steaming. Cosmetically speaking, no ‘fine’ tea, perhaps – but instead living proof that its unsorted and ‘raw’ character contributes with unique qualities in aroma and taste that are able to result in green tea of great personality and natural depth.
By utilizing the leaf in its entirety, the robust qualities of the Yabukita cultivar are clearly expressed in a refreshing and well-balanced umami. A warm hazelnut-like note from the stem material sweetens the aftertaste and is complemented by a brighter spectrum of greener tones reminiscent of both familiar associations such as summer grass as well as garden sorrel and fresh hay.
Chiran Nōen themselves describes their Farmer’s Sencha as “nostalgic in scent and taste”, and there is something unmistakably time-honoured about the tea’s fine, but unpretentious form of expression. The tea leaves offer a minimum of three to four tasteful brews at gradually higher steeping temperatures, and after the first initial sips it is not difficult to understand why this type of unsorted green tea often is enjoyed among the Japanese tea farmers themselves.
Tea trees | 茶樹
Cultivar: Yabukita
Age: 20-45 years
Altitude: 150-200 masl
Shade: direct covering for 7 days before harvest
Fertilising: homemade fermented organic fertiliser made from leftover products from local agriculture and fishing industry
Cultivation method: certified organic (read more about organic and natural farming here)
Harvest: April 20th-21st 2022
Production method | 製茶方法
Steaming: medium (chūmushi)
Hi-ire: medium (chūbi) on January 20th 2023
Producer | 生産者
Chiran Nōen 知覧農園 under the leadership of the Nuriki 塗木 sisters
Origin | 産地
Chiran in Kagoshima, Japan
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