Guides

The first clue is aroma. Sencha smells green and brisk, like snapped stems and spring grass. Hojicha rises warm and t...

The leaves at the bottom of the kyusu still smell green, soft, slightly savory. Yes, you can eat tea leaves. If you a...

Pale green in the pitcher. Almost transparent at the edges, then suddenly luminous where the light passes through. Th...

If you want to know how to brew Sencha, watch the water before the leaves. The right green tea temperature changes ev...

Takeno Joo (c.1502-1555) stands at the center of the wabi-cha lineage: the figure who received the aesthetic directio...

The deep-steamed Sencha from Makinohara — with its rich umami, dense green liquor, and the kind of full-bodied sweetn...

Gyokuro — Japan's most prized shade-grown tea, with its characteristic sweetness and deep umami — was not discovered ...

When you brew Japanese Sencha, there is a good chance the leaves come from Yabukita: according to the Ministry of Agr...

Nitrogen makes tea taste like tea. More precisely: the amino acid theanine — the compound behind the savory, umami-fo...

Weeks before the spring harvest, workers drape long sheets of cloth across the tea field. Sunlight dims. The leaves d...

Organic tea certification in Japan is stricter than the label suggests. The word "organic" gets used loosely in tea m...

When you whisk Matcha and that layer of fine foam forms on the surface, saponin is part of why. It is not the only re...