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.

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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...

Another year, another tea. Wakoucha tasting, tea N°16: Kawane Koshun, 1st flush 2018, De Theeliefhebber

Tea is a natural product that is made from a plant that grows in an environment. We call this environment terroir. This environment is not a fixed and static thing, it is something rooted in nature and influenced by climate. Just like for wine, a tea plant will behave differently in a dry year than in a wet year, and react differently to a cool spring as to a warm spring. So it is normal that two vintages from the same tea garden will be different from year to year. Of course, during the tea making proces the tea producer has a strong influence to push his product into the direction he wants. As most teas, like most wines, are blends, he can soften extreme weather influences by mixing teas from cooler or dryer gardens with better situated ones. So when I found out that I had Masui Etsuro's Koshun both in the 2017 and the 2018 vintage I wanted to compare them. You can read my tasting notes on the 2017 in the previous post, here comes the 2018.

source: https://teaholics.co.jp/en/2017/01/30/best-brewing/

Koushun, Kawane, Masui Etsuro, 2018, De theeliefhebber: 

10th of August, 2019, in the evening, windy and cloudy and a leaf day. Imported from Japan by De Theeliefhebber, a Belgian company. 98°C, 3 gram, 2 mins, 150ml.

Wet leaves smell like a classic black tea but with a whiff of almonds and vanilla. Coppery red brown infusion. The infusion has a beautiful smell, very pleasant but also complex, with flowers and almond, and very compact. In the mouth a nice body, a nice complexity, but a rather short finish. Very nice sweetness and almost no astringency.

Second brew was nice and sweet, with less complexity, but worth the trouble.

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When we compare the two the most striking difference was the level of astringency that was a lot higher in the 2017. The smell of the wet leaves was also more in the black tea register, with less flower. The colour of the infusion was very different, with the 2017 bright orange and the 2018 darker and more red. As for the taste, the 2017 was more floral and more elegant but with more astringency that gave it structure when hot but was a bit too much when cooler. The 2018 was softer and mellower, with sufficient but less agressive astringency and more spices and more sweetness, a very 'round' tea.

Both teas were recognisable in their Koshun characteristics, the cultivar coming out very clearly but were different in structure. There is of course also the fact that the 2017 is a year older and this could be the explanation for the elegance and less obvious sweetness, but my general feeling was that 2018 is a year that brought more volume and more body, but 2017 more complexity and structure and a far longer finish, and I preferred the 2017. Both are sold out, but you should keep an eye out for Masui Etsuro's 2019.