Sencha Saito Yumewakaba green tea
Sencha Saito Yumewakaba green tea
Sencha Saito Yumewakaba green tea
Sencha Saito Yumewakaba green tea

Sencha Saito Yumewakaba

Green Tea

Origin:  Honyama Tea Harvesting Area, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan

Organic: Shizuoka Organic Tea Farmers Union (SOTFU)

Jien-cha: completely farmer grown and processed tea
Tea Farmer: Mr. Saito

Grade: Ichibancha
Oxidation: none
Manufacture: steamed and oven-fired (baked)
Steaming Method: Asamushi (light)

Appearance: deep green color with large, flat leaves
Flavor: bright and complex – a ‘spirited’ tea
Aroma: fragrance is solidly tea-like
Liquor: distinctive, pale straw-colored liquor

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Sencha Yumewakaba is made from a Japanese tea bush cultivar that offers abundant bright, sweet, and clean vegetal flavors layered onto a deliciously complex but well-balanced base tea flavor. For those who want a touch of astringency embedded in a tea with a slight vegetal style, this is a splendid choice.

Mr. Saito once again has given us a unique tea with special characteristics. In appearance, the leaf is large, with a superb finish that shows expert handling throughout its manufacture and firing. The color is deep forest green and the leaf has a nice matte finish. This tea is an easy steeper and and easy sipper – one does not have to wrestle with any challenging aspects of the leaf to enjoy this tea. It is simply solid and delicious.

The flavor characteristics are those of a bright and intriguing, sweet & clean, classically vegetal Japanese green tea. This cultivar shows some astringency but it is in perfect balance with the body and the aroma, so is barely noticeable. The aroma is one of the most ‘solid’ of this year’s offerings – it is just straightforward and intriguing and encourages sipping many steepings of the leaf. The body is quite full and balances a complex, spirited but accessible flavor palate. This Japanese green is particularly good when served cool or even cold.

The liquor is a pale-straw that might fool some regarding the bounty of flavor that the tea contains. Utterly delicious, this is one of the many highlights of the Shizuoka tea harvest for 2020!

Sencha Yumewakaba is produced by our creative tea producer Mr. Saito. His tea gardens are in Honyama, which many believe to be the area that produces the finest senchas in Shizuoka Prefecture. Saito’s tea fields are located in the mountains near the Warashina River. The environment of these tea fields is pristine and filled with natural beauty, healthy plants, birds, insects and all the good components of a thriving tea garden.

Fans of Mr. Saito may recall that he suffered the loss of most of his tea in the spring of 2015 when he had a fire in his warehouse. We received a small first order that year and then nothing else until the following year. We are pleased to report that his garden has suffered no serious permanent damage from the warehouse and living quarters fire of three years ago, and he is back to full production. Saito’s tea gardens are thriving, and his tea is as tasty as, or even better than when Mary Lou first met him in the autumn of 2012.

Want to know more?

Shizuoka Organic Tea Farmers Union

Harvesting Season:

1st Spring Pluck Ichibancha
(May, June)

Steeping Instructions:

Japan makes many styles of green tea, and each type requires its own steeping parameters. It is easier to mis-step with Japanese green tea than it is with Chinese green tea because Japanese green teas are more sensitive to water temperature and length of time in the water. Sweetness/astringency in Japanese teas can be influenced by steeping technique. It is important to know for each tea you have what water temperature and steeping time is appropriate.

The reason for this is that premium, spring-plucked Japanese green tea contains a large amount of amino acids and a lesser degree of tannin, which is what makes a tea bitter. Steeping Japanese green tea in cooler water encourages the amino acids to release into the steeping liquid, but not the tannins.

 

We follow our mentor Mr. Saito’s instructions for steeping his tea and he has been spot on.

 

However, we decided to see if we could come up with two different measurements of tea – one for those who like their Japanese green tea lighter and another for those who prefer a fuller dimension of flavor.

What was interesting is that the tea did not become astringent when we used 4 grams of leaf (twice the usual amount).  In fact, the larger quantity of leaf brought a more complete fullness of flavor to the liquor without any bitterness. We tried this test with all the tea from the Shizuoka Organic Tea Farmers Union, and found that across the board these two measures worked beautifully.

 

And for us, Bob preferred the tea steeped with 2 grams of leaf while I preferred the same tea made with 4 grams of leaf.

 

Steeping Instructions:

 

Use 2 teaspoons (2 grams) or 4 teaspoons (4 grams) per 4 oz water

Steep 1-2 infusions at 1 minute each
Water temperature should be 170°F – 185°F
(depending on your preference)

 

Re-steeping:

 

Japanese green teas can generally be re-steeped with delicious results.

We recommend:

4 ounces of water cooled to 160°F
1 minute re-steep
Steep as many times as you can until the flavor is diminished.

Map:

About Jien-Cha:

This tea is classified as Jien-cha, a term that means that it has been grown, processed and packed by a tea farmer.

This is an uncommon situation in Japan regarding tea. Most Japanese tea is manufactured in a small or large tea factory by a company that does not own its own tea gardens. Instead, the factory purchases aracha (stable, semi-processed leaf) from various tea farmers and blends different lots of aracha together to arrive at the flavor that they want. These teas are sold under the label of the tea company and the origin of the tea is usually unknown to the consumer.

While it is unusual for a tea farmer to process his own tea, this is an accomplishment that Mr. Saito and the other members of the Shizuoka Organic Tea Farmers Union are proud of. Jien-cha gives them total control over the finished tea, and also allows them to put all their years of knowledge about tea cultivation and manufacture into making truly delicious artisan tea.