Young and highly active tea farmers belonging to Chakura produces original black tea named “KOHAKU”. “Kohaku” means “amber” in Japanese.

The leader of Chakura, Shingo MURATA, has a ruling passion to produce “KOHAKU”. His emphasis is on the fermentation of tea leaves and the maturation after processing. He strictly manages the fermentation conditions such as temperature, humidity, aeration during fermentation.
Besides, this black tea is maturated for more than 1 year in the old wine cellar. This wine cellar is semi-artificial crave and the temperature and humidity inside are maintained constant, 15-16 degree Celsius and 70-80% respectively. Maturation in such condition makes the black tea mellowed, resulting milder taste and more condensed aroma.
As well, the Chinese characters in the central of package mean “maturated black tea”. The forward two characters mean “matured” and backward two characters mean “black tea”.

I feel delicate sweetness and mellow aroma in the 1st infusion extracted in lower temperature. The second infusion steeped on higher temperature has nice harmony of astringency, bodied texture and mild smooth mouthfeel. Compared with European-familiar black teas, Japanese black tea has relatively higher umami or sweetness and less aroma and bodied texture just in my impression. Every teas has terroir and I like both tendency of flavor. We can choose each tea corresponding to each occasion.
Let’s say, I’d like to drink “KOHAKU” after work or before going bed.

Fortunately, my colleague brought many gerbera and assistant nice woman arranged them very beautiful style. Thus I set “KOHAKU” along the flower arrangement shown in the above.
For domestic sale, we can buy them online. However, online-shopping system is managed in Japanese only, unfortunately.
On the other hand, we can get “KOHAKU” in the fancy tea shop “OCHARAKA” in COREDO Muromachi.

In this stylish store, we can look them on the right-hand shelf from the entrance as shown in below.