Koshun my love: a five star wakoucha. Wakoucha Tasting, Tea N°27: Koshun Wakoucha, Suzuki, Iwata, 2nd flush, 2018

I still remember the taste of my first Wakoucha. It was quite a surprise because I never had heard of Japanese black tea. But I loved it very much, and so I started to look out for them. And as these things go, I thought I already mastered the subject well after tasting five or six of them. This is, of course, an illusion, and when my ITMA teacher gave me one he brought from Japan (this one) and told me the cultivar was Koshun, I had never heard of it. But when I tasted it, I was hooked, and even today, after tasting about 80 different Japanese black teas, I still open every packet containing Koshun Wakoucha with high hopes !

The one from Masui Etsuro was my first Koshun, but the tea that convinced me completely that this cultivar was something really special for Wakoucha was this one.

Black Tea Koshun, Suzuki Teafarm, Iwata, 2nd flush 2018, Yutaka Tee:

Harvested june 2018, 2nd flush. Teagarden at 150m above sea level. Mr Suzuki specialises in black tea, but I could find little info about him on the net (try googling Suzuki and Iwata…). According to the Yutaka website he travels every year to Taiwan and China to study black tea, and he has won several awards. 6 euro for 30 gram (which is a bargain).

Picture from the Yutaka website

Tasted 18th of August 2019, it just stopped raining, a leaf day. 98°C, 3 gram, 150ml, 2 mins. Dark and well oxydated leaf, some tip and some stems. No aroma. The wet leaves however smell very floral, and some of them are very large. Most are brown-coloured but some are still a bit greenish, after all Koshun is and stays a 'green' cultivar. Redbrown infusion. Very striking and unusual aroma, like a complete flower arrangement and a delicious warm berry cake, ready to eat. Very nice, really beautiful. More of the same in the taste, incredible flavour profile for the attaque, pure, clear and incredibly yummy. One of the best Wakoucha tasted until then. Very long, and a nice little touch of astringency. I almost cried because of the beauty of this tea. The aftertaste of berries kept popping up.
Second brew: smelled like roast chicken !soft and complex, the berries were gone, very nice but had a hard time defining a name for the aroma (complex?). Definitely worth the effort.
😊😊😊😊😊

I tried an ambient brew (1 hour, 250ml, 3 gram, room temperature) on the 13th of october. The tea delivered a very woody smell and first taste impression, but it excelled in the very nice and broad aftertaste.

This tea is still available at the Yutaka website https://www.yutaka-tee.de/en/suzuki-black-tea-koshun-premium.html.