Wakoucha Tasting, Tea N°3: Iwata Koshun, 2nd Flush, 2018, Thés du Japon

This tea was harvested on my birthday, the 27th of June 2018 ! But that's not why I liked it so much...

Iwata is the birthplace of the Yamaha Motor Corporation and is situated in the southwest of Shizuoka. Shizuoka is where 40% of all Japanese tea is produced, but we have no further information available about the teagarden, except that it is organic.

We do know the cultivar, Koshun, and we know that this tea is a Second Flush. It is not uncommon to see Wakoucha made from a second flush (harvested later than the first one in early spring). As an economic model this makes sense, it gives the farmer two occasions to harvest and sell at a good price from the same garden. The first harvest is used for green tea and the second, that will never deliver the freshness and umami of the first one for green tea, is used for black tea. The leaves are bigger now and are treated different, with a process of withering, rolling and drying.

Koshun, the cultivar used here, likes this. It is a cultivar that is often used for kamairicha where the tea is roasted and not steamed, and it is a very good choice for oolong and wakoucha. It is a crossing between Kanayamidor and Kurasawa, sometimes quite astringent as a green tea, with floral aroma's.

Iwata Koshun, 2nd Flush, Thés du Japon:

25 euro for 100 gram. No pesticides. Bought in a 50gr package, good until 20 april 2025. No pesticides nor chemical fertilizers were used, though the garden was not yet certified.

29 juli, evening of a beautiful summer day, a flower day. 150ml, 3 gram, 8 minutes, 98°C, in a kyusu. The dry leaves have almost no smell but look quite beautiful, quite big and complete, and with a nice amount of tip and some stems. Quite an enchanting smell for the wet leaves, sweet honey, frangipane and cooked fruits, and they are quite big and complete and look fantastic. The infusion colours beautifully, bright with a hint of orange, and has a spectacular smell that wafts from the cup. I put some tea in an INAO winetasting glass and then poured it out again, and the resulting smell was magical and beautiful. The infusion smelled complex and elegant like a dish with warm fruit and spices, never over the top, exactly as it should be. The taste is elegant and light and friendly and has a very interesting complexity. The changes in taste are spectacular, but always soft and friendly. The finish is beautiful. This is a beautiful tea that does not yell but caresses. Addictive. What a tea. A second infusion still was spectacular in the nose, but less complex in the mouth. But it was still extremely yummy with a very pleasant soft character. 😊😊😊😊

Wakoucha Tasting, Tea N°2: Nearai Karabeni, 2nd Flush, 2017, Thés du Japon

During the final quarter of the 19th century the Japanese government sent Tada Motokichi to China and India to study the production process of black tea so export from Japan to the USA could be boosted; in a later article we will talk about his trips. One of the problems for Japan was that their cultivars, ideal for green tea, had difficulties in oxydizing in the right way and it proved almost impossible to make the black teas the export market wanted with them. Mr Motokichi came back with seeds from Assam and Darjeeling but also from China and planted these in the regions deemed fit. In the 20th century Research Centres developed these into new cultivars fit for black tea, and most of them have 'beni' in their name, 'beni' standing for black.

This tea is made with Karabeni, a cultivar developed out of seeds from Hubei in China. Is it a coincidence that Hubei is the only place in China where tea is steamed, like in Japan ? As I don't know when the Chinese started doing this in this region I can't tell you, but I guess there is a link. Karabeni was not used a lot, by the time it was approved for planting and production the market had collapsed, but there is still some around. It is reported to be very different from most other wakocha-cultivars.

Nearai Karabeni 2017, 2nd Flush, Thés du Japon:


11,43 euro for 100 gram. Good until april 2024. Tea garden in het forested part of Kita-ku Ward, where the Miyakoda river enters the Hamana Lake. It is a part of Hamamatsu, the biggest town in Shizuoka, in the west of the prefecture. Subtropical climate. Organic agriculture.

28 july 2019, a root day. 150ml, 98°C, 2minutes, 3 grams of tea, in a kyusu. Quite a special smell for the dry leaves, with a sharp almost acidic twang. Very fragmented material, some stems and a little bit of tip. The aroma of the wet leaves is a bit strange but with a faint whiff of berry-jam. The infusion is bright red. Very subdued aroma with some honey in the background, changing into old musty beeswax. The taste was light and sweet, then a small astringency developed. The finish was creamy with a touch of that berry jam. A very quiet tea. 😊😊😊

We don't know a lot about this tea, but the fragmented material and some of the characteristics gave the impression that it tried to copy an Indian black tea. There are two reasons why Japan should not do this. First, even if 11.43 euro is cheap for a good Wakoucha it is way more expensive than Indian teas, and second, as a wakoucha the quality fails. Luckily an exception in the Thés du Japon range...

Florent Weugue, the owner of Thés du Japon, confirmed me later that this was a 2nd flush.