Tea tasting: Handpicked sencha (Satomi Seicha)

Satomi Seicha was one of the tea farms in Kawanehon Town that I visited when I was in Shizuoka last month. During the visit, I had the pleasure of tasting many of their teas, including this particular tea alongside its machine-harvested counterpart. Despite the very subtle differences between the two (in my opinion), I had really liked this one more, so I bought a packet.

Satomi-san named the tea as Yama no Ocha or Mountain Tea, and it’s a lightly steamed sencha made of Yabukita cultivar. He takes pride in producing it, monitoring and controlling every step from cultivation to harvesting. When the tea leaves reach the perfect stage of tenderness, they are handpicked one by one. The result is beautifully shaped leaves, like a collection of long, slender needles. Grown at an elevation of 200m, this batch of tea was harvested at the end of April this year.

This tea is characterised by its light colour, but apparently, looks can be deceiving, as the tea has a strong aroma and rich umami taste. Well, time for me to find out.

The packet I bought came in a fancy wooden box, I’m guessing cedar like most tea boxes, which was even signed by Satomi-san himself. Such a cool presentation.

The packet contained 30g of tea leaves, which were long and dark green. This is one of the more informative packaging I’ve seen, with some brief background information about the farm and tea, and also brewing instructions.

So to enjoy this tea at its best, it’s recommended to use 3g and steep in 80ml of water cooled to 60°C. For the first steeping, leave it for 90 seconds.

The resulting tea liquor was light yellow, with a mild grassy aroma. Taste-wise, it was sweet and had an umami taste that lingered, with a velvety texture in the mouth. It’s true that high-quality sencha reveals its flavours most beautifully at low temperatures.

The tea was good up to 4 steepings, although the best flavours were in the first 3 cups. I think 3 steepings are the norm for most Japanese green teas, especially sencha, but I usually like to squeeze it to the max until all flavours run out. LOL.

It occurred to me that I should have probably bought the mountain-harvested sencha as well, just for the sake of comparison. The latter was harvested in the middle of May from a field at an elevation of 600m. I remember Satomi-san pointing out the general direction of that particular field to me during my visit, and I was rather awed by the height. It has to be accessed by vehicle via a mountain road.

Anyway, next tea to be reviewed will be an award-winning sencha from another Kawanehon farm.