A spring tea party was held on 1st and 2nd April on an open-air folk museum “Kyodo no Mori” in Fchu, Tokyo. Tea merchants, tea farmers and tea fanciers provided various teas as they like.

Shinkoju, the tea shop specializing cultivars, presented tea tasting. In the booth, we compared two types of ‘Saeakari’ green tea. Mr. Kawaguchi, the owner of Shinkoju, explained this cultivar has roasted bean-like aroma, which is specific to ‘Saeakari’ and its grandfather cultivar ‘Asatsuyu’.

Mr. Kawaguchi explained the difference between 2 teas.

Some consumers like the aroma, on the other hand, there are some consumers who feel the smell undesirable. Thus, most of tea farmers contrive to minimalize the aroma. In contrast, Mr. Kawaguchi requests to maximize the aroma to the tea farmers in order to satisfy the special demand for the roast bean-like aroma.

Shinkoju sells teas of various cultivars. At this day, he brought more than 10 types of tea cultivar. Furthermore, he sold tea nurseries of various cultivars!! It was the first time I have seen the situation tea merchants sold tea nurseries on such an event. I could get his passion for sharing the loveliness of diversity of tea cultivar.

From Makinohara upland, Mr. Shibamoto came there. Surprisingly he brought a pan and demonstrated pan-firing. Some visitors tried pan-firing.

In this event, he sold a variety of pan-fired tea. Different procedures can provide multihued features of pan-fired tea. Especially, I like milk-like sweet aroma of “matured oolong”.

A tea fancier, Ms. Abe, brewed a pan-fired tea from Miyazaki prefecture, which locates in Kyushu island, the southwest edge of Japan. The tea she brewed is made by one of the big four in Miyazaki.

This tea has a light sweet aroma, which is somehow different from the sweet aroma of “Sencha”. In my opinion, I can feel 2 types of sweet smell of “Sencha”, mellow smell derived from roasting and vanilla-like spicy aroma. I felt the light sweetness in the pan-fired tea different from the types of Sencha aroma.

In such an event, we can meet a variety of tea and find something new!
I hope you will meet nice teas.