Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Posted by Miss Neddy at 08:37 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Categories: Tea Green

Japanese teas are now more popular and well-known internationally than they were ten or twenty years ago. People who frequent sushi restaurants are probably familiar with sencha (煎茶), which has a distinct scent and a rich, grassy flavour. Some might find it astringent or even bitter, as sencha, in many restaurants, is often steeped with water that is too hot. Sencha goes well with food because of its strong scent and flavour, and even when paired with strongly-flavoured foods such as unagi (marinated eel) or sake (salmon) or sweet foods such as chocolate or azuki (red bean) paste, the taste of the tea fills the mouth and nose, cleansing the palate at the same time.

Matcha (抹茶) is powdered green tea, usually from the same type of leaves as sencha. Aside from the traditional Japanese tea ceremony, it is not that common to encounter matcha as a drink; more often, it is used as a flavouring for ice-creams, cakes and even noodles. Cha soba (茶蕎麦 - buckwheat noodles) is often eaten cold in the summer time, and the tea flavour makes the buckwheat noodles taste even more refreshing. From a traditional Chinese medical viewpoint, the introduction of the cooling matcha helps to counter the summer heat. 

Genmaicha (玄米茶 - literally “dark rice tea”) is green tea mixed with roasted rice. The rice look like peach or brown coloured buds, and give the tea a roasted, almost smoky flavour that is reminiscent of the Shuixian (水仙 - Narcissus) teas, but much lighter. Aesthetically, Genmaicha is a delight to drink, as the tea leaves mixed with the rice make a beautiful contrast between dark (leaves) and light (rice), and the colour of the tea a pale yellow, much like wulong.

The most expensive Japanese green tea has to be the Gyokuro (玉露 - Jade Dew), which requires painstaking labour to maintain, harvest and process; it is a variant of sencha but is much finer. The bushes are protected from direct sunlight around 20 days before harvesting, by placing screens above the bushes that diffuse but do not entirely block out the light.  The leaves are more tender and moist due to this protection and the tea made is sweeter and greener. The colour of Gyokuro leaves are a startling jade green, ranging from a dark shade like dried seaweed to flakes of light grass green. The shape of the leaves are flat and sharp, reminiscent of Longjing.

One has to be careful with Gyokuro, as it is as delicate as Biluochun; the water temperature must be fairly low (well below boiling, around 40 to 50 degrees Celsius), and more leaves (almost twice as much) are usually required than for the usual sencha.

 

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