Super Shincha Selection - Chado Tea House May 2024
Be a Shincha Ninja.
The weather in Vancouver is hot, cold, dry, and wet. It is snowing in some parts of British Columbia and tinder-dry elsewhere.
It’s a busy time in the Japanese Tea Industry. The farmers have picked the year's first harvest, and the tea is being processed and shipped to fans like us.
Several Shincha teas have arrived already, and new shipments are arriving daily. As you read this, we have 2024 Shincha teas ready for sale. We have new versions of familiar teas and also a couple of brand-new teas from Chado Tea House, and we are very happy with our selections. We hope you give them a try and let us know.
This month we moved to a larger warehouse facility, so we have more space ready for these new teas and for new stock of popular teas that we had short stock on. We now have lots of room and are busy filling it up.
It's great seeing our shelves filled with packages of tea. We try all of our teas, and like looking through a bookcase full of books you have enjoyed, remembering why you like them, so it is for us with our teas. Not just for reminiscing, it is also exciting to have brand-new teas. They are like new books by a favorite author; we can't wait to ‘open them up’ and enjoy them. We hope some will become our favorites.
2024 Shincha Teas
The tea from the 2024 Spring harvest is now available.
One of the nice things about dealing with tea is that even now, we are still totally dependent on Mother Nature – this first tea we introduce below was the earliest tea we tried this year, the first to be ready, and that is because it is grown in Kagoshima – that is in the very south of the country, the new teas from more northern regions came a week or so later. Even in our modern world of supply chains, yield curve inversions and artificial intelligence this and that, we still rely on the sun and the location of the tea field to get things done – which is nice, we think.
SHINCHA - Sencha - Diamond Tea
We proudly present this perfect Premium Sencha tea, grown in Kagoshima in south Japan.
This tea has the perfect balance of richness and umami, which combine to produce a wonderful burst of flavor fitting for the first tea of spring.
The enduring sweetness, the subdued color, and the fresh aroma all combine to leave you with a satisfying lingering taste.
4g (1 1/4tsp) / One cup / 80-70°C (176-158°F) /30-45 sec / brew up to 3 times
SHINCHA Special Edition - Sencha NAMA Premium
This is the new 2024 release of our old favorite, our ‘grassy’ sencha.
This is a Fukamushi or deep-steamed tea. In this tea's case, the steam's lowest temperature setting is used; some teas are steamed with steam under pressure at a higher temperature. Processing the tea leaves at a lower than typical temperature for Sencha retains the grassy freshness of the taste.
This tea looks good and tastes better!
If you are looking for grassy Sencha, please try this one.
4g (1 1/4tsp) / One cup / 80-70°C (176-158°F) /30-45sec / brew up to 3 times.
Where Did We Come From?
We have a short story to leave you with today.
We learned this from a BBC series on Tea called One Cup, A Thousand Stories, which we enjoyed. It is available on some streaming services, and we found one episode on YouTube It focuses mainly on Chinese tea and culture but has some interesting bits about tea in other countries.
This story comes from the De'ang people (also referred to as Palaung or Ta'ang) , one of China’s oldest ethnic groups. We had not heard this story before, and it is an interesting take on the various ‘where did we come from’ legends that have intrigued people since we all arrived here somehow.
The De'ang people believe they are descended from tea. They believe 102 tea leaves fell from the sky before humans existed and landed on Earth. 51 of those leaves became young men, and the other 51 became young women.
The men and women formed 51 couples. 50 of the couples returned to the sky, leaving one couple to stay on earth and begin populating it.
We know that tea arrived in Japan from China, so you never know; perhaps that is how it all began.
The series seems to be modeled on David Attenborough’s various series on life on Earth, and the narrator takes it slow and steady. The programs are filled with beautiful shots of tea growing in the mountains and being enjoyed by people of all shapes and sizes.
It is the perfect viewing material to relax to with a cup of your favorite tea. It's especially good if you have had a long, tough day, for example, moving from one warehouse to another, and the moving company arrives four hours late!
