A Gallery of Good Sencha

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.