A very special ordinary black tea. Wakoucha Tasting Tea N°18: Obubu Pine Needle Matsuho-no-Wakoucha, Wazuka, 2018

This tea is a contradiction in itself. It is made from the Yabukita cultivar, good for 74% of all plantings in Japan, very productive, very tasty and very early, and so without competition the most popular cultivar for green teas. Here it is produced as a black tea, and this is already an exception, but on top of this it is rolled like a sencha, in needles. I never met a Wakoucha like this before.

The tea is made by Akihiro Kita, the flamboyant founder and president of the Obubu tea farm in Wazuka, Kyoto, where you can follow intensive training programs about Japanese tea. If you check out the video on their website you can even meet the wonderful Laura, my fellow ITMA student. Wazuka is a small town in Uji, Kyoto, and is one of the heartlands for green tea, with about 300 different families making it. The spring harvests from Uji usually fetch the highest prices so the incentive to make black tea is small, and this tea is a second flush.

Akihiro 'Akky' Kito

Kyoto Pine Needle Matsuho-no-Wakoucha, 2nd flush, 2018, Obubu Tea Farm

This tea was a gift from Inge, a most enthusiast tea-teacher (check out her tea and cheese or tea and chocolate evenings at http://www.theetijd.be/). Harvested in July 2018, so a second flush.

August 14th, 2019, late afternoon, raining, a root day. 98°C, 2 min, 3 gram, 150ml, in a kyusu. The dry leaves are remarkably big and rolled like sencha, with colours varying from brown to almost black. No particular smell. The wet leaves however smelled very nicely and rather complex, with mainly floral aroma's, like a flower arrangement of many diferent flower types, and something very sweet. In the background I found notes of a very dark chocolate with a high cacao-percentage. The infusion is light caramel-brown coloured and contained small particles that passed through the filter. The tea has a quite remarkable smell, with first something sour opening, and almost immediately the flowers, without the sweetness. The attaque is beautiful, light and complex and very fine, on a high note. The taste then continues over the whole line but finishes drily, more like a black tea, with the astringency only in the finish.
The second brew (same parameters) was also excellent, flowery and a bit sweeter and less complex. It had a remarkably long finish, longer than the first brew, and it made a beautiful tea.
I used to be a bit sceptical about Yabukita for black tea, but this is an excellent and interesting cup, and I look forward to the next one that passes here.

😊😊😊😊

This tea is still available at https://obubutea.com/product-category/black-tea/. You have to add taxes to the prices on the website, but ordering from Japan goes usually quite well. There are many interesting teas on the website, and ordering a few more will reduce your average transport cost.

Like forest floor material of a pine wood...