Guides

Tea begins in China — not as a beverage but as a leaf. The earliest plausible records of tea consumption place it in ...

James Taylor did not arrive in the Kandy hills intending to create one of the best-known tea origins in the world. He...

The Edo period (1603–1868) is when tea became Japanese in the fullest sense — no longer a practice of monks and samur...

Japanese tea did not begin with Matcha, and it did not become permanent the first time it arrived. In 815, the monk E...

Brew Gyokuro beside Hojicha and the contrast is clear before you even drink. One has a sweet, marine quality; the oth...

A cup of brewed Sencha delivers about 6mg of vitamin C per 100mL — roughly 7% of Japan's dietary reference intake of ...

The astringency in green tea comes mostly from catechins — a group of polyphenols that also carry most of green tea's...

Kamairicha is Japan's primary pan-fired green tea, made by tossing fresh leaves in a hot iron pan instead of steaming...

Pick up a handful of Tencha and you are holding something that looks nothing like what ends up in your bowl. The leav...

The cup is small. The temperature is low — around 50 to 60°C, cool enough to hold comfortably. The leaves sit longer ...

Fresh-cut grass, a faint marine edge, a clean sweetness underneath. Sencha tea is the everyday Japanese green tea mad...

Most Japanese teas are grown with pesticides. That is not a secret — it is written into the regulatory framework that...