Shincha – New Harvest Sencha (100g Bag)

Each spring, as the weather starts to warm, the tea fields in the mountains south of Kyoto begin to awaken. The tea plants, after saving their energy during the long, cold winter, sprout tiny new green buds. Over the course of a month, these buds start to grow, reaching up and up for the wide blue sky. When the time is right, tea farmers get busy harvesting the spry new leaves.

In the micro-climate where the new leaves grow, changes in the weather day-to-day affect the nuances that develop in the tea. As a result, the distinctive character of this year’s Shincha will never be repeated.

This year’s Shincha has a wonderful, brilliant fragrance, and an approachable, refined taste.

In the cup, it’s well-balanced, with proportionate crisp green astringency and round umami. The aroma is classic Shincha: bright, verdant, vegetal, and soaring.

Newcomers will find this is a good year to experience Shincha for the first time. The astringency is elegant – not harsh – and there are parallels to straight matcha and other green teas.

Shincha fans will enjoy this year’s character as well. You may pick up on subtle secondary milk cream and malty notes in the finish, and the umami is more mellow than punchy, blossoming nicely on the tongue.

Compared to our normal selection of sencha, Shincha has a powerful flavor, aroma, and aftertaste. Its youthful strength is refreshing, like a splash of ice-cold water on the face in the morning.

Like Shincha, our regular sencha lineup is also harvested once per year in late spring. We allow the regular senchas to rest until they develop a relaxed, mature flavor. We then blend them with previous harvests to produce a consistent product sold throughout the year.

We love our regular sencha selection for its calm and mature character. We love Shincha for its fleeting, energetic character that invigorates us at the start of summer.