I am a sencha snob. This can be somewhat awkward when a tea merchant asks me how I enjoyed their Japanese green tea. Often I just can’t give them the enthusiastic response they seek. Having said that, I start every day with a pot of sencha, and have done so for the past five years. I drink, and buy a lot of sencha so I’m allowed to be a bit picky. So today, I’ll list a few senchas that are a pleasure to drink, and describe why they made the grade.
At the top of the list we have a few expensive senchas packaged and sold by Japanese companies. If the Japanese think they are excellent, then they are bound to be expensive. They generally come from a single named farm, like a house reserve wine. The loose leaves are a lovely forest green. They are flat, small, unbroken needles with few bits of stem. When brewed, the tea is golden and the leaves turn a bright, vibrant green. The flavour is subtly vegetal, smooth, and fills the mouth. With these more delicate senchas, I lower my brewing temperature and lengthen my brewing time by a few seconds.
Hibiki An and Yamadashi are both top quality tea producers in Uji and you can find Yamadashi Ya in Kyoto, while Hibiki An sells online. Sebo Kochikuen is from Nagoya area and is unusual in that the loose leaves have a slight curl to them. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to acquire more, since it was a gift from a friend, but it’s the kind of tea you can find at the tea counter of a nice department store, or specialty tea shop in Japan.
At the lower end, we have some other teas that are not perfect by the Japanese standard, but are good enough for my daily cup. Mt Fuji International, and Harney & Sons Fine Tea (basic sencha) exemplify this category. The loose leaves have the same color as the more expensive sencha, but they are generally more broken, and contain more pieces of stem. The brewed tea is an emerald green and may even contain a noticeable amount of dust in the cup. The flavour of these senchas is usually a bit stronger and rougher, but they still should not be bitter. If the leaves are broken and dusty I reduce my brewing time by about 10 seconds. Fortunately, Mt Fuji and Harney & Sons are both online and reasonably priced. Both teas resemble what you would find in the tea isle of a Japanese grocery store. They may not be high end teas, but they are what most people drink every day.
What do all of these senchas have in common? They are fresh! When you open the package, they leaves are a dark green and your nose is assaulted by the fresh green tea aroma. Would you buy a brown and dry head of lettuce from the grocery store? Certainly not, so why would you by a tired, dry, straw-like sencha? Tea packaged in Japan stays fresh longer than sencha that is shipped to the US in bulk and repackaged locally. To some degree it doesn’t matter if it is high grade or low grade sencha as long as it reaches your cup while still fresh.
Narrow back streets twist between ancient stone facades of Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter. In this labyrinth of medieval buildings hides an oasis for the weary traveller. Antonio welcomed us to Caj Chai, a comfortably cosy tea shop and café tucked away in this colorful neighbourhood. Antonio is relaxed but confident about his art, and like any master practitioner, he keeps a few good tea books hidden away in his back room.
The shop boasts over a dozen Jananese teas from sencha to genmai-matcha to gyokuro. Since Antonio purchases them in small sealed packets directly from Japan, they stay spring-fresh. His menu also sports a handful of pu-er and green teas from China, as well as blacks and chai from India. What really stands out is the Caj Chai’s list of oolongs. For 15 euros, he’ll break out the gongfu set and walk you through the brewing process, or for a more modest price you can get a teapot and a thermos of water at your table.
It’s a great place to relax and de-stress, but don’t leave without checking out the shop’s collection of tea ware for sale. He imports both nice equipment for everyday use as well as a few works of art, including some of the nicest sencha teapots we’ve seen outside of Japan. He even carries work by a very promising Czech potter who trained in Korea, and produces clever designs inspired by the Chinese gaiwan.
Tea-Guy was kind enough to sponsor a contest with some great prizes. He asked tea lovers to share some tea moments with the rest of us by putting up a video on YouTube. Maura, my beautiful wife, put up her entry today, and I’d like to share that with you. She brews up some Korean nokcha with tea ware hand crafted by Park Bu Won. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
I was tired and cranky after wandering all over London in search of a good cup of tea. After supper, my wife forced me to stop at Yumchaa in Soho. I really wasn’t expecting anything, but the fine folks behind the counter completely salvaged my day. Their tearoom selection is almost entirely flavored and scented blends, but they don’t restrict themselves to black tea as a base. They offer classics like Jasmine, gunpowder mint, and lapsangsouchong, but they also carry their own creations like Wanderlust (sencha, apple, cinnamon and almond) and Notting Hill (keemun, apricot, strawberry, marigold and cornflower).
Unlike most establishments in the UK, Yumchaa dumps the loose leaf tea and water into a pot with plenty of room the leaves to unfurl. Then they leave it to the customer strain the tea into their own larch tea cups. Finally, we found a tea room that treats tea with the love and care it deserves.
No British tearoom would be complete without sandwiches and cakes. Yumchaa lives up to anyone’s expectations in this regard. My only complaint is that their room as a bit small and gets crowded on a busy day. Don’t let this put you off. It’s well worth the effort to drop by Yumchaa’s shop located between Tottenham and Oxford Circus tube stations.
One of the joys of being a student again is having access to interesting databases. Poking around the Library catalogue at my university, I noticed some articles from the 17th Century relating to tea and the East-India Company. Low and behold, they were links to images of these documents held in the Early English Books online database. I won’t reproduce any of the images here because I’m not certain of all of the copyright implications, but I will pull out some gems for your enjoyment.
“An Answer to a paper set forth by the coffee-men directed to the Honourable, the Commons in Parliament assembled being reflections upon some propositions that were exhibited to the Parliament for the changing the excise of coffee, tea, and chocolate into a custom upon the commodities.” This 1680 title is more than a mouthful, but it contains some statistics on coffee, tea, and chocolate consumption in England. According to the paper the British consumed the following:
“Coffee…100 Tuns a year” I assume they mean tons, but old measurement systems is not my specialty.
“Tea, 27000 Pounds a year”
“Chocolate, 6000 Pounds”
“Cocoa-nut, 300 Hundreds”
The purposes of the letter to Parliament was to argue the relative merits of various excise taxes proposed for these beverages. The source of the statistics was the Coffee-Men of London, who certainly had the best interests of their own business at heart.
Based in Paris, Le Palais Des Thes carries a world spanning selection of tea comparable to the offerings of Mariage Freres. You can visit their lovely shops in Paris, Oslo, and Tokyo. Their wares are tastefully displayed, and within moments of entering the shop, their helpful and knowledgeable staff offered us a cup of the day brew to sample. I was impressed to see teas from a few eastern European countries like Gerogia and even single estate teas from Africa.
The staff was well trained, and genuinely interested in tea. They were kind enough brew up some Dong Ding oolong at our request, and then they knocked our socks off with an amazing Jin Xuan. Their recomendations were in line with our interests and our budget. They didn’t push us into buying anything, but they directed us to some of their truly special teas.
I was quite impressed with both the service and selection at Le Palais Des Thes. I look forward to brewing up my purchases as soon as I can unpack my tea ware from storage.
Jorg, our host in Trondheim, suggested that when we get back to Oslo we should check out Le Palais Des Thes. It’s a nice French outfit with great selection. Anyway, we really hit it off with Voung and Ane Marte, employees of the shop. They showed us some Jin Xuan, a truly special oolong from Taiwan. Voung prepared it with a method he called Gongfu…cowboy style. That was simply his way of brewing with basic gongfu techniques, but without ceremony and ritual.
Cowboy style is such an appropriate name for how we often prepare tea. I love sitting down on a leisurely Saturday morning and breaking out the kit for a full gongfu tea service. When I have guests over, I enjoy treating them to the show and the traditions and the stories. But we don’t always want to engage in the full pomp and circumstance. Sure, I brew my pu-erh in a tiny Yixing pot, but I’ve been known to use the first four brews to fill my travel mug before heading into the office. This is the heart of cowboy style. It’s a fast and loose tea preparation that follows your current whim and needs.
When you study under a tea master, or at least the tea masters I’ve met, they expect you to follow their proscribed method and ritual without deviation. Only after achieving the status of master, are you allowed and expected to develop your own style. This is a bit difficult for most of us Western tea enthusiasts to swallow. I think cowboy style is our response. Even in Asia there are plenty of people brewing up excellent pots of tea without following the ceremony of any specific gongfu master. Cowboy style is a nod to the traditions in a way that is suitable for every day tea drinking. In some ways it makes the full gongfu process more special because it separates the ceremony from our everyday experience.
I think its time for another pot of tea…cowboy style.
With a funky atmosphere, the Tea Lounge in Oslo is about as close to hip as any place with the word “tea” in its name. The lights are dim, and a candle glows on every table. Even at noon on a Friday a steady stream of young Norwegians sit down with laptops and cell phones to chill out for a few minutes.
The menu boasts a nice selection of teas from China and India, plus plenty of flavored greens, rooibos, and herbals. I have only two complaints. Like every other cafe I’ve been to in Scandinavia, the Tea Lounge uses a tea ball or tea spoon in which to confine the leaves in a cup. They just don’t have enough room for the leaves to open and release their full flavor. My second complaint is that the wall behind the bar displays far more alcohol than tea. I’m not sure I’d feel as happy here in the evening as I am in the early afternoon.
If you are a tea enthusiast, tea merchant, tea farmer, or processor, you may want to take a look at a new message boar that has popped up recently for our benefit. The Tea Roundtable is a great place to ask questions, show off your collection, gain community consensus, or start promoting a new idea. If you spend five minutes reading just one of the many topics, you’ll find a reason for returning again and again.
A. C. Perch has been importing tea into Denmark since 1835. And a few years ago they opened their first tearooms in Copenhagen, Tokyo, and Osaka. The tearoom fits the Danish ideal of “cozy”, with warm wood tones and large copper tea tins lining the wall. Tea is served in large silver teapots and nice, but not amazing china.
Their menu offers a few dozen teas from around the world and a few tasty treats. I certainly enjoyed the scones with jam and clotted cream, but for those with more appetite they also offer “high tea” with a selection of cakes. I found their tea choices a bit odd. It looked like their menu was heavily weighted towards India. They go so far as to offer more oolongs from India than from more traditional sources. Their Darjeeling First Flush Oolong was very nice, but has a completely different flavor from what you’d expect from more traditional sources. They also carry a large number of blends. Unfortunately the Danish names don’t always mean much, and there’s no explanatory information in the menu. The staff was more than happy to help describe the few we asked after.
They offer more teas for sale online, and in the quaint shop downstairs. Each of the major tea regions are represented. We picked up the Kronprinsesse-Blanding (Crown Princess Blend) to try at home, and we’ll order a few more in the months to come. I have yet to give them my critical sencha test, but that will come soon enough.
Next time I’m in Copenhagen, I’ll definitely drop by for a second visit.
Narrow back streets twist between ancient stone facades of Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter. In this labyrinth of medieval buildings hides an oasis for the weary traveller. Antonio welcomed us to 
Based in Paris, 
teas from China and India, plus plenty of flavored greens, rooibos, and herbals. I have only two complaints. Like every other cafe I’ve been to in Scandinavia, the Tea Lounge uses a tea ball or tea spoon in which to confine the leaves in a cup. They just don’t have enough room for the leaves to open and release their full flavor. My second complaint is that the wall behind the bar displays far more alcohol than tea. I’m not sure I’d feel as happy here in the evening as I am in the early afternoon.
A. C. Perch
