Thursday, October 11, 2012

2012 Sencha Kouchi




Another Sencha from Teamountain's offering – this time, a humbler, inexpensive one. Purchased from Slovak shop Nomad, this Yabukita-breed tea comes from a less-known area of Kōchi prefecture, located on Shikoku island – which made me even more curious about it.

  




Packed in a typically beautiful golden-yellow bag, its leaves come in a form of surprisingly good-looking, long Asamushi needles. They emit quite a simple, fruity smell with notable freshness.






With such humble tea, humble, simple character is what I expect and desire. This tea fulfills the expectations for a good everyday Sencha – it remains steadily enjoyable during all infusions, having a mostly sweet, well-balanced taste with notes of green grapes, nuts and milk. No traces of bitterness – or anything unpleasant, actually. It leaves an equally simple, sweet aftertaste, which doesn't last too long, but feels pleasant and refreshing nevertheless. One thing worth noting is that its character really seems different – it didn't remind me of teas from Shizuoka, Uji or Kyushu, instead being quite original on its own. It might be interesting to look deeper into tea production of Kōchi, for me a completely unexplored area before this tea (at least as far as I can remember, for my memory isn't always that reliable).






For me, this tea was a nice surprise among this year's offering of inexpensive Japanese teas. This post isn't going to contain any more words, just one sentence to sum it up: it's simple, it's good.


5 comments:

  1. dear Michal, as always thanks for your excellent posts.
    Last week I was in Brno for the 3rd time on a busines trip and this time I was finally able to visit the tea room Probuzený Slon (which I 'discovered' on your website). I spent a great evening there drinking Hanhakoucha Honyama Koushun (a Japanese oolong) in Kung Fu Cha style. Unfortunately we don't have such professional tearooms here in Belgium so I'm hoping that my work will send me once again to Brno in the near future ;-)
    best regards,
    Gregory

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Gregory,
    thank you for sharing your experience from the Probuzeny Slon teahouse, I'm glad that you enjoyed it! Hanhakoucha Honyama Koushun looks very interesting and I myself am thinking about going to Brno and visiting Probuzeny Slon to try it in the near future. I haven't been there in a while and now I miss the place :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. This tea is truly lovely; as said words cannot do justice; yet are not the leaves enriching/nutritional looking to make one want to consume them like greens; in that not a thing is wasted.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This tea looks lovely, and yet my eye is heavily drawn to the metal piece upon which you are brewing. Great contrast!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Gregory> Hey, nice to read that you were satisfied in our tearoom :-)

    ReplyDelete