A very rare cultivar. Wakoucha Tasting Tea N°23: Kimura Wakoucha Benitsukuba, Kimura Teafarm, First Flush 2017, Yutaka Tee

Very typical for the Wakoucha culture in Japan is that it is still very much experimenting and looking for its different voices. The experiments try out different methods and terroirs, but they also try out different cultivars, and some of these are very rare. The Benitsukuba cultivar was registered in 1958 in Ibaraki, from undefined parents, and is only found in the immediate area. One of the few producers who use it is Mr Kimura from the Kimura teafarm in Sashami, Ibaraki, to the north of Tokyo. He only makes a very small quantity of it every year but has been doing it for a while now.

Kimura Black tea Benitsukuba, Kimura Teafarm, Ibaraki, First Flush 2017, Yutaka Tee:

Harvested May 2017, first flush, at 50m above sea level. 20 euro for 100 gram. Very limited production.

17th of August 2019, 3 grams, 150ml, 2 mins, 98°C, in a kyusu. The dry leaves smell strongly like chocolate with some eucalyptus in the background. Dark, highly oxidated leaf (this is after all a 'beni' or 'black' cultivar, very complete, very nice looking. The wet leaves smell like chocolate with a touch of mustiness reminding me a bit op Pu'er. Coppery red infusion, with a yellowish-green hue. The aroma of the infusion has hints of chocolate and a hovering sweetness that never breaks really through, and again these tones of fermentation. A quite peculiar tea because when freshly infused it shows almost nothing of the typical Wakoucha sweetness. It does however bring a clear Assamica touch. When cooling down the Assamica 'yunnan' character seems to disappear and is replaced by the chocolaty tones of a Wakoucha, and also in the taste this comes up, first mostly in the finish and as the tea cools down more upfront. I did not particularly like the first nips of this tea, it needed some time to grow on me, and it excelled in the finish, which is definitely very cocoa and very nice. A very interesting tea as it kept developing in the cup, becoming more and more complex.

😊😊😊(😊)

The tea was in January 2020 still available on the Yutaka website: https://www.yutaka-tee.de/de/kimura-schwarzer-tee-benitsukuba.html

Smoked Black Tea from Shizuoka. Wakoucha Tea Tasting N°22: Pine Wood, Kaneroku Matsumoto, Thés du Japon

There is something deeply psychological in smoked teas, something that pulls us back to our ancestral past when wood was the principal fuel for the biggest part of our family history. Classic Chinese Lapsang Souchong teas are for me a part of autumn, and they indicate a change in season, but I drink them because of this, not because of the tea. In most cases it is inferior tea that is used to create it, and with most you experience only smoke, so heavy that it hides all the deficiencies of the tea. 

So I wasn't very keen on trying this smoked Wakoucha sample from Thés du Japon, but boy was I mistaken ! This tea was made by Mr Kaneroku Matsumoto in Kiriyama, Shimada City in Shizuoka, the pioneer of wood-smoked Wakoucha. He is best known for his whisky-barrel-smoked black tea, but this one was smoked on pine wood. The family farm exists since the 1930ies and practices chagusaba, a very environmentally friendly way of both fertilising the teaplants and fighting weeds by covering the soil between the rows with the dried and cut high grasses that surrounded the farm. You can see a bit more in this Youtube video. 

Smoked Black Tea from Shizuoka, Pine Wood, Thés du Japon:

Sample sent to me in the summer of 2019. 16th of August 2019, 98°C, 150ml, 2 mins, 3 gram. Small, fragmented and dark brown leave with a heavy smell of burning pine wood, exactly the smell of the log fires in my parents home in the Noorderkempen, a part of Belgium where extensive pine forests were planted to provide trunks for use in the coal mines. Almost all the wood my father used came from the trees in our own garden, as during every autumn storm some of these came down (they have very shallow root systems and the soil is poor and sandy). 

Rather dark redbrown infusion. Woodfire-aroma's but absolutely not monodimensional like many LS, and when the cup is swirled sweet elements join in, ripe fruit, soft rubber (like the inside of a soft tyre for bicycles). Very pleasant, but also interesting and fascinating, I could go on sniffing it forever. The taste continues on the same line, there is smoke, abosolutely, but it does not dominate, and there are many at first hidden elements that drift through the smoke...a bit like dining in a black forest inn, with a roaring fire and a good dish of venison. Very nice complexity, very appealing ! Very long finish. When cooling a nice freshness and a nice astringency developed. Coldbrewing this tea might be quite interesting... 😊😊😊😊

2 Flushes and a choice. Wakoucha Tasting Teas N°21 and 47: Takachiho Black Benifuki first flush / second flush

We do not always realise this, but a Japanese tea farmer has to make a lot of decisions on the way. One of these is about the harvests. In normal circumstances a farmer will harvest as soon as possible the spring growth and make a green tea with it, a shincha, and the earlier he can harvest the more he will earn. This explains the popularity of Yabukita, a very early cultivar, and tea gardens for green tea will be situated in terroirs that help this to happen. Tea gardens in colder places (higher, or in a different situation) will receive other cultivars where this early harvesting is less important. Some farmers will use it for an inferior tea, especially when they use fertilizers, but on Kyushu some farmers will use the spring harvest to make kamairicha, and some farmers will even make a Wakoucha out of this late first flush harvests. They are not quite the same as a Darjeeling First Flush, though some flavours remind me of them, but if they do there is always that sweet floral touch of a Wakoucha, and you can recognise them quite easily. They are often light and elegant and very interesting.

A second flush tea is harvested later, in summer. There are several reasons to do a second flush harvest and make black tea out of it. Second flush green teas are not worth a lot as the market prefers first flush teas, and tea gardens can also be pruned to prepare them for next year. Some of the best Gyokuro gardens never get a second flush harvest. Some gardens however need one, again to prepare them for next year, and the harvest of a second flush is often beter fit to make a black tea than the first. The coarser and bigger leaves are well fit for the making of black tea, and if well made, it makes a higher price then 2nd flush green tea, especially in export.

In the marketing of Wakoucha information is key, and information about the harvest date should be mentioned on the packaging. Some Wakoucha are a blend of different flushes, even from different tea gardens. This is not a problem, and they can be very good, but again, I think this information should be available somewhere.

Here are tasting notes of two Benifuki's from Takachiho, a place in the NW of Miyazaki on the Kyushu Island. Although I think the first is a 2017 and the second a 2018, we talk about the same tea and the same place, and I though it would make an interesting comparison.

Takachiho Black Benifuki, first flush, 2017?, Hotsoup:

Harvested mid-May, from a tea garden at 350m above sea level. 19.75 euro per 50 gram. This the first Wakoucha I ever tasted, on a tea sommelier training end of 2017, and the tea was made with a kyusu, 90°C water. The dry leaves were black with a touch of green and smelled fresh and floral. The infusion was more yellow and tasted of chicken stock and lily-of-the-valley. The wet leaves smelled like a working kitchen and meat and old flowers. An interesting tea. The tea fascinated me so much I bought some, and in later tastings throughout 2018 and 2019 the tea kept being very floral, but the chickenstock-aroma's disappeared and were exchanged for something more like cocoa. Nice finish. I don't know if the tea changed or the taster... 😊😊😊

Takachiho Black Benifuki, second flush, 2018, Hotsoup:

Harvested august 2018. 23.12 euro for 50 gram. The dry leaves are big, complete and smell fresh and pleasant. I used a kyusu, 90°C, 3 gram, 150ml, 2 min, so a little bit less hot than the other Wakoucha I tasted on this blog. High complexity for the wet leaf. Orange coloured infusion. Very fresh and floral aroma's, a very nice refreshing touch of citrus fruit. Very nice taste, a very full tea, a bit monodimensional, but good structure. A rather timid finish. 😊😊😊

Could I taste a real difference between the two teas ? Yes, but I could not say if this difference was due to the year or the different harvest date (or the age of the tea). So, an interesting experiment, but not conclusive (but I drank two nice teas !).

An attempt to differentiate Wakoucha styles

What makes a black tea a Wakoucha ? Well, first of all of course that it is a black tea produced in Japan, but there should be more than just origin. If we want to be able to talk of Wakoucha as more than a name but also a style we need at least a common denominator to establish it as different from other black teas. After having tasted more than 60 of them I feel that there is a unique touch that most of them have in common. It makes them very different from a Chinese red tea and can be recognised immediately once you have learned the difference.

One of the things all the interesting ones have in common is an incomplete oxydation but in a very different way as with oolongs. In most wakoucha you will note a greenishness in the brown leaves, and often you will find leaves or parts of leaves that are still green, and there is at a stage in the production a fixing treatment not unlike that of a green tea, only later in the process. It makes somehow that they retain a few characteristics of green tea, very different from classic black tea from Assam for example.

This happens most strikingly with the specific cultivars that were developed for green teas. The leaves of many of these cultivars oxydate only slowly. Yabukita is a good example and one of the most difficult to oxydate. These teas retain a striking and typical 'vivace' that is very interesting, but even the beni-cultivars developed from Assamica often keep some of these characteristics, and though the differences between the styles of Wakoucha can be big there seems to be a common denominator, that beautiful sweet touch that will hover between featherlight floral aromas and the deepness of cacao.

For the moment lots of Wakoucha producers are still in an experimental modus, and teas can differ strongly in style and character. This is one of the reasons why the teas are for the moment so exciting. I personally think this is a strength not a weakness and that this variation is fascinating. However, I think it is possible to group them in four styles.

A first group is the group of the 'breakfast-style' teas. Here the producers tries to bring in the typical astringency for a black tea, keep the price as low as possible and copy a black tea from Sri Lanka or Assam. I think that this is not a path to be followed. The high wages and lack of terrain will always keep the prices high and Japan can never compete with India or Africa or Sri Lanka on this level.

A second group is the group of teas that seem to go most of all for structure and sweetness, and in this they resemble a bit the red teas from Fujian. Benihomare and Benifuki are perfect cultivars for these teas, and when brewed strong they quite like a dash of milk, often adding a creamy layer to the taste experience, like a very complex cacao. The oxydation level is high but not 100%, and the wet leaves often remain a mix of (dark) green and brown. In the case of the 'beni'-cultivars they often vome from first-flush harvests, for other cultivars a second-flush is usual. These teas are often red in colour because of a high level of thearubigins, and the colour indicates a higher level of oxydation than for the next group.

Dry Benihomare leaves

A third group is the group of teas made from 'green' cultivars with lower or incomplete oxydation where the leaves naturally resist fermentation and oxydation. These teas combine the sweet or spicy touch of the second group with a very interesting elegance and their aroma's combine the spices and fruits of the first group with floral elements. Even when brewed stronger they dislike milk, but they should be made with shorter brewing times (2 minutes). They are to be appreciated slowly and with concentration, like good wines. There are beautiful expressions to be found here, and some cultivars like Yabukita or Koshun can deliver truly great teas. The colour of these teas often goes towards the orange and is an indicator of high levels of theaflavins, and is considered as a desired characteristic. Both theaflavins and thearubigins are reported to have a benevential effect on blood sugar levels what makes them interesting drinks for diabetici. Their natural sweetness makes them also a very good alternative drink for people with a sweet tooth.

A Benihikari from Tsukigase

A fourth group is also made from these 'green' cultivars, but adds a herbaceousness to the teas, very much like the first flush darjeelings. These teas can be very complex and very interesting as they give a two-layered taste sensation. At first they seem to deliver the typical wakoucha-sweetness of spices and flowers, but then grassy and herbal tones pop up, and I can imagine these teas becoming very popular in European regions with a fondness for these first-flush teas like Germany.

Benihikari from the Shibamoto farm with a clear first flush herbal touch

Aged Black Tea. Wakoucha Tasting Tea N°20: Miyazaki Kanayamidori Wakoucha, 2013, The Teacrane

For many beginning tealovers this is a strange concept: haven't we learned to drink our tea as young a possible ? There is the obvious exception of Pu'Erh, but we have all been confronted with teas in our collection that lost their fragrance and taste and had to be reduced to material for composting. However, just like wine, tea is a natural product, it is alive and this means evolution does not stop when the production process does. Lots of teas need a rest after production or transport, and some new teas are blended with rested teas to achieve a more complex taste pattern. Some people even prefer the softer taste of a rested tea that had a few months or a year to 'cool down'.

Aged teas however fall into another category. The most famous ones are of course the fermented teas of China, the Pu'er cakes, that can become very old and keep changing with age. They are usually called by their Pu'er name, and come from a few well defined regions. When we talk about aged teas this is usually leaf tea, mostly oolong or black, that has been aged on purpose, usually for 5 years or longer. These teas are usually kept in well closed containers and regularly tested to see the evolution. Some producers will roast these teas at certain intervals to keep humidity under control, or keep the tea in caves where their evolution is influenced by the environment.

What usually happens is that taste components start melting together, and the tea will become richer and deeper, often also more complex, and the taste experience goes into the direction of an aged wine. It is not an easy thing to do, and your tea has to be of excellent quality, and the teamaster or his family needs a lot of experience. Drinking it can be compared with tasting the great wines of the Bordeaux, and the taste profiles that when young were more separated have now melted together into a complex aroma.

Miyazaki Kanayamidori Wakoche, 2013, The Teacrane:

Harvested 8 september 2013 in Gokase, that wonderful tea-village in Miyazaki, from gardens at 650m height. Produced by Akira Miyazaki on the Miyazaki Sabou teafarm and than stacked for ageing. 90 euro per 100 gram excl import taxes, so this is already a quite expensive tea. The cultivar is Kanayamidori, a crossing between Yabukita and a Shizuoka Zairai.

https://www.the-tea-crane.com/manufacturers/akira-miyazaki/

15th of August, 2019, in the morning, a root day, windy and rainy and quite cold for the time of year. The dry leaf is broken into small brown fragments. The wet leaf offers an extremely complex scale of taste impressions with spices, honey and fruit. It is very fragmented, mostly light brown with some snippets of green. The infusion has a nice amber colour with a greenish hue. The smell is extremely complex, with fruit and spices but blended and melted into each other. In the taste the same complexity comes back and all elements have melted together into something unique. Not overly bold, and with a small background bitter note (not astrigent, bitter). In a previous tasting I also had citrus-tones and an interesting sourness, this seems to be gone in this tasting.

A second brew was pleasant and complex, beautiful and long, and in the echo a strong taste of abricot showed up. The two next brews were also pleasant.

😊😊😊😊

This tea is no longer available but came from The Teacrane.

The leafhopper did it. Wakoucha Tasting Tea N°19: Korogi Planthopper Yabukita, 2nd flush 2017, The Tea Crane

Strange things can happen to tea. Taiwan is famous for its Oriental Beauty, a tea that becomes sweet in taste because of the attack of the Jacobiasca Formosiana, a leafhopper that attacks the teaplants and makes holes in the leaves to extract the juice. The plant reacts by making sugar so the leaves begin to taste sweet, what the grasshopper doesn't like, so he leaves the leafs* alone.

The official name of our leafhopper friend is Empoasca (Matsumurasca) onukii Matsuda. In China he is considered as a pest, and he can destroy or damage up to 50% of a harvest destined for green tea, but in Taiwan and Japan organically working famers noticed that their (second flush) oxydized teas were becoming sweeter, and they learned to harvest at the best moment to capture these aromatic profiles. If you really want to go scientific, you can find something about our friend here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4589377/.

A very complete article about the Tea leafhopper: http://www.teageek.net/blog/2016/02/bug-bitten-teas-why-are-leafhoppers-only-sometimes-a-good-thing/

Korogi Planthopper Yabukita, 2nd Flush 2017, The Teacrane

Harvested 22 september 2017. 41.5 euro for 100 gram (excl import taxes). 40 year old bushes from a 20acre tea garden called Tabako-ya at a height of 630m, orientation north-south. The top layer consists of crumbled lava, and the leaves are harvested before the garden is fertilized for next year. Made by Yoichi Korogi in the village of Gokase. He is a kamairicha-specialist with 30 years experience. I talked about one of his other teas here and you can find some general info about him here.

August 14th, 2019, late afternoon, raining, a root day. 98°C, 2 min, 3 gram, 150ml, in a kyusu. The dry leaves are small, fragmented and darkbrown with a few lightbrown ones and a few greyish-green. The wet leaves smell like a black tea, a bit woody, but with fruit and the sweetness of honey (or of grasshopper !). The colour of the infusion is a quite light caramelbrown with an orange hue. The aroma is light and elegant, with very nice fruity tones, very elegant and fine. A bit of swirling in a tasting cup or a wine glass makes the smell very complex. In the taste all elements seem to have melted together, and they only give themselves up after a while. Very nice attaque, a nice woody tone in the middle. The sweetness comes at the end, after the elegance. Beautiful atertaste or echo, very thick and sweet, especially when the tea is cooled down, and when this happens even the finish itself gets this. This is quite a fascinating tea, and very agreeable.
The second brew was still beautiful, and a very nice brew.
😊😊😊😊

Still on stock with The Teacrane: https://www.the-tea-crane.com/product/korogi-planthopper-yabukita-wakocha/

* Joke. 😑Playing with words. Couldn't stop myself.

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...