National tea tasting championship 2008 was held in 29th of September, and Mr. Shinya Yamaguchi, a master tea taster of Hoshino Seichaen, got the first prize with the highest score ever.

The Japanese tea tasting skill is contested in; type, season, region, and appellation distinction for the tea leaves.  120 selected representatives from each prefecture compete for those skills that are needed for their daily job such as tea selection, blending, and finishing.

The products of Japanese green tea depend on, of course, the quality of the crude tea, but the skill of tea processor also affects it greatly. 

This is the result of National tea jury 2008, which shows the leadership in each tea type.

It is decided by picking top 3 pointed tea in each autonomy and summing them up, so that the full score is 600.

• Sencha 10kg is the hottest contest in the jury.  Shizuoka prefecture is deep in this category, so it often appears in the leadership ranking.  In these days, Kawane and Yamé compeat closely each other for the top.
• Sencha 30kg is category for the mass productive tea.  It is dominated by Kagoshima prefecture because other sources cannot cultivate tea in large farm to get 30kg homogeneity.
• Sencha 4kg is newly set in 2007.  A lot of unique Sencha can be nominated, so that the competition is in chaos at this moment.
• Fukamushi can be called the category for Shizuoka prefecture.  Other sources hardly process Sencha into Fukamushi.
• Kabusecha is shade grown tea, and the speciality of Kinki area such as Kyoto, Mie and Shiga.  Some high quality Kabusecha tend to sold as Gyokuro, or the farmers of Kabusecha would convert the orchards into Sencha or Gyokuro, so the competition is getting quiet recently.
• Gyokuro is from Yamé, Uji, and part of Shizuoka like Okabe.  For more than 20 years, Yamé have got to be outstanding in this category over Uji, and the competition has made by each appellation inside Yamé.
• Tencha is the crude tea of Matcha, and Uji always hold the top ranking.
• Tamaryokucha is the speciality of middle Kyusyu area, Kumamoto and Saga.  The tea is processed into ball shape.
• Kamaguri is the only toast processed crude tea in the jury, while others are steam processed.  It is contested very closely between Ureshino in Saga and Kumamoto.

62th National tea jury had taken place from 26th to 29th of August in Kumamoto.  Here is the result of Gyokuro.

26 teas got the grade 1st to 3rd in this year, and 24 out of them were Yamé tea.  Mr. Tateishi in Hoshino village got the first rank for four years running, which renewed the record of the jury by himself, and got full score 200 again since 2007.

National tea jury is a sort of Olympic game for tea farmers.  Most of the nominations are coming from specially designed orchard that is focusing on making a certain amount of crude tea (10kg for Sencha, and 4kg for Gyokuro), so the quality of the tea does not necessarily link directly to the commercial one of the farmer. But the result can be an indicator that who and which appellation have motivation to make great tea.

Back to the basics, I explain what is Japanese green tea exactly.

Here is the script I used in this presentation.

In this part, I will sort Japanese tea out of all the tea kinds.  In the next part, I will explain the variety of Japanese green tea.

There are several ways to sort teas, and I decided to sort them by way of processing.  But to begin with, I’d better to tell about tea as a plant.

In the botanic classification, all the teas in the world are made from 1 species, which is called Camellia sinensis, originated southern China.

Camellia sinensis has one variety, and it is called Camellia sinensis assamica. 

Assamica tree heights around 5 to 6 meters while Camellia sinensis 1 to 2 meters.  Assamica has more astringency and more yield than Camellia sinensis, so it is suited for commodity black tea, so it is mainly grown in India. 

But both of them can be crossed or made cuttage, and in fact, there is very major cultivar called British variety which is grown Camellia sinensis from assamica cutting.

Cultivars are improvement or optimization of tea tree according to geography and climate.  Yabukita is the major cultivar of Japanese green tea.  Saemidori is very suited for Gyokuro.

We can roughly sort teas into 2, Fermented or Unfermented. 

In the fermented teas, there are many ways to do it.

Fermented by bacteria is like cheese and yogurt. It is called dark tea or post fermented tea, or black tea in Asian countries.

Pu-erh tea is the most famous, it is fermented by aspergillums. Goishi cha is famous Japanese dark tea.

Fermented by enzyme.  Tea leaf contains oxidase by itself, so without neutralize it, the leaf will get oxidized.

Perfect fermented tea is black tea or crimson tea in Asian countries. Picking the leaves, and leaving them as they are, and dry them after fermentation process is over.  More than 70% of entire teas are processed into black tea.  Keemun and Yunnan is from Chinese, Assam and Darjeeling is from India, and Uva Ceylon is from Sri Lanka. Keemun and Yunnan and Darjeeling are of camellia sinensis, and Assam and Uva Ceylon is mainly used assamica. Keemun is very famous for Earl Gray.  Earl Gray, to be exact, has to be made from Keemun tea with Calabria Bergamot oil.

Most of the partial fermented tea is made in China.

Blue tea is fermented in range from 30% to 70%, and terminated the oxidization process by heating.  You may know Oolong, Oolong is blue tea.

White tea is scarcely oxidized but decomposed by its enzyme.  Bai Hao Yinsen or silver needle is very famous.  Large tea plantations in India try to make white tea, but it cannot get superior to Chinese so far.  Some cheap silver needle is often made in India.

Fermented by Oxygen means leaf reacts with oxygen directly. 

Yellow tea is heated to neutralize the enzyme immediately after picking, it is the same as green tea, but it get wrapped with parchment and aged.  Usually green tea cannot be aged, and actually deteriorates with the passage of time, but under a certain condition, it goes to Yellow tea. Junshan Yinzhen or silver needle yellow is very precious tea.  It is not unusual at all that it is sold more than 10 thousand euros par 100g.

Green tea is unfermented tea.  I have heard that so called “tea professional or tea master” said Japanese green tea is unfermented and Chinese green tea is fermented.  It is wrong.  Both Chinese and Japanese green tea are not fermented at all.  So what’s the difference?  It is the difference in the way of neutralize the enzyme of the leaf.  Chinese green tea is toasted, and Japanese one is steamed.  There are a few exceptions like Ureshino cha, but 99% of Japanese tea is this steamed green tea.

For all Gyokuro lovers and people who would like to get on the life with Gyokuro, it is a pretty easy way to enjoy it.  You do not need to care for brewing at all. 

There is a scientific background why an ice-brewing method keeps Gyokuro taste for such a long time.  The signature of Gyokuro taste is coming from umami of L-Theanine.  L-Theanine has very delicate taste and it takes long time to be extracted into water from leaf. 

In case of hot water brewing, water "cooks" leaf to force L-Theanine out, then the leaf locks remaining  L-Theanine in.  So when it comes to the second infusion, we are actually using "cooked" leaf, which makes tea taste like Sencha rather than Gyokuro.

Inside the pot of Shinobi-cha, both infusing and infused water keeps the temperatue around 4 Celsius.  The leaf cannot be cooked under this environment and takes time to infuse the tea contents.

After all the ice qubes melt, you can use hot water (70-80C) to brew the second.

There are several way to make a cup of Sencha, but the most of the instructions are based on "Japanese condition" and lack the measuring method, which confuses the people living in other counties.

The following video shows very basic, traditional and also practical for everyone.

The leaf:   2g for 1 cup.  I recommend to brew 2 or 3 cup in one time.

The water:   70℃.  The hardness has to be below 180mg/l, which may be tap water through Brita (below 50 with new filter), Volvic (60), or CRYSTAL GEYSER (38).

The infusion time:   1 minute for good quality Sencha (Yame tea can be always 1 minute). 90 seconds or 2 minutes for others.  Fukamushi (deep steamed tea, typical Shizuoka tea) can be 30 seconds regardless the quality.

Other infusion:   For the second infusion, you do not need to wait.  Pour water into the Kyusu and serve the tea into cups right away.  You can enjoy the third or fourth infusion.