Selecting Sencha: Part 2 Tips for Merchants

In my last post, I talked about how as a consumer you can identify better quality, more flavorful, and fresher sencha. Unfortunately, most consumers have little choice unless they are willing to travel to Japan and buy from local processors and tea shops. Today, we’ll look into some actions tea U.S. merchants can take to improve the quality of sencha they offer so the rest of us don’t need to travel across the Pacific to get a good cup of Japanese tea.

Firstly, sencha is a green tea, and like all green teas it has a short shelf life. It goes stale much faster than black teas or even most oolongs. The color of the leaves dulls over time as does the flavor and the aroma. Sencha that is merely one year old is usually all worn out and not worth drinking. The first thing we can do is to only sell tea from this year’s harvest. Since all sencha is harvested in the spring, it should be relatively easy to find the approximate harvest date. I believe that all tea packages should include the harvest date, but for now it’s enough if merchants can guarantee the year of harvest for sencha.

Since all sencha is harvested in the spring, you only need to order it once a year. The quality won’t improve if you wait longer to order more. Yes, I realize it’s difficult to guess exactly how much you will sell in the entire year, but selling a bad tea is a terrible sin in an industry that is trying to gain a reputation based on superior quality. Lupicia, a Japan based tea merchant, revels in the full name of “Lupicia: Fresh Tea.” They live up to that reputation by purchasing smaller lots of tea then they know that they can sell. They would prefer to run out of a popular tea, than to over-order and sell something that has gone bad. I suspect that most tea enthusiasts would accept occasionally shortages in order to get higher quality.

There are additional ways to improve sencha’s shelf life. Keep the tea cool, keep the leaves whole, and remove oxygen. Each of these will slow down the processes that ruin sencha. The Japanese have perfected refrigeration systems that keep the leaves fresh longer by carefully controlling both the temperature and humidity. We don’t generally have these high-tech refrigerators in the US, so what can we do? If you buy tea that is pre-packaged into sealed mylar or foiled envelopes, you can put them in any refrigerator to extend their shelf life by about 6 months. The Japanese packager should be able to guarantee the right humidity in the package.

I don’t know if they refrigerate, but Harney & Sons offers sencha that was vacuum packed in Japan. The vacuum packaging removes most of the oxygen, the chemical most responsible for quality deterioration. The rigidly vaccum packed bricks have other benefits as well. The system also helps keep the leave from breaking as they are shipped around the world. Damaged leaves and dust go bad much more quickly due to the additional surface area. These broken bits can add unwanted bitter elements to the brew. Whole leaves stay fresh longer, so protect them with rigid packaging. Tins, boxes, or vacuum packaging are good choices to keep the leaves from crumbling in transit.

In summary, merchants can improve their sencha by following a few straight-forward guidelines. First only sell fresh leaves, and get rid of any sencha that reaches its first birthday. Second, look for Japanese suppliers that can pre-package tea, and especially look for vacuum packaging. Refrigerate pre-packaged sencha to slow the depredations of time. Lastly, protect the leaves from breakage with rigid packaging. If merchants follow these methods, we can all enjoy a superior sencha.