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MUSINGS ON TEA | SAKURA DREAM

Why does this green taste like cherry blossoms?


This tea is a fairly new acquisition at our bar.  It requires a blog post because it is unlike any other  Asamushi sencha that we have at hand; it has very distinct notes of cherry blossoms, yet contains nothing but steamed tea leaves.

Finding the Tea:  this tea grew in Asamiya (Shigaraki), roughly 40km southeast of Kyoto.  I met the tea grower, Kitada Reiko San thanks to an old friend, Hori Haruka San.  Hori San is a force behind the Wazuka Tea Festival, and has a very large number of tea friends all over Japan.  Thanks Hori San!

Sakura Dreams - Sencha

Visiting Kitada San on 01.2024, while working on the movie
'A Postcard for Ishimoto'


Cultivar:  Koshun (香駿).  This is a cultivar that I have encountered as sencha, kamairicha and matcha; the impression I had from Kitada San's tea was strong enough to make me want to look more into it.

香 (Ko) means 'aroma'; the Chinese pronunciation is 'xiāng' (as in mi lan xiang oolong).
駿 (Shun) means 'fast'.  

It is a fairly new cultivar:  in the year 2000, the Shizuoka Prefecture Tea Industry Research Centre (静岡県茶業試験場) crossbred Kurawasa and Kanaya Midori.  You may read the original documents of the Research Centre here.  You may also read about other cultivars in this link.

The Centre describes Koshun as a fairly resistant cultivar, harvested roughly at the same time as yabukita.  The emphasis is on its aroma.

Kitada San next to her Koshun tea trees.


Cherry Aroma???  Potential Explanations
Blending sencha with small amounts of cherry leaves and blossoms is quite popular in Japan and can produce a very delicious brew that shouts 'spring'. When I first sipped Reiko San's tea I thought it was precisely this type of scented tea... but it is not!  
Reiko San believes that the combination of Asamiya's soil with the Koshun cultivar produces this crazy result.  


This tea experience reminded me of the development of vibrant, unexpected aromas in oolongs: you start with fresh leaves and end up with a brew that clearly tastes like fruit, flowers or spice.  

A couple of years ago I did some research on the potential causes for the development of these complex aromas: 

- Plant stress.  Rocky soils (as in Wuyi Mountain’s cliffs), exposure to sub-zero winter temperatures (as in Ali Shan’s Gao Shan Cha) and en ecosystem rich with insects (as in Oriental Beauty) encourage tea plants to produce better flavours.

- Enzimatic oxidization.  Natural withering processes will yield very different results when they happen under full sun, in the shade, or piled in buckets.  Oftentimes, tea producers combine a series of distinct oxidization steps. This process is also heavily encouraged by rolling or bruising the tea leaves.

- Firing / fixing:  this process develops many of the sweet, sugar like aromas in tea.   


I found the following articles about aromatics in oolong teas very interesting.  If you're feeling like going into this rabbit-hole, check them out!

https://academic.oup.com/bbb/article/71/6/1476/5940228?login=false


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6977495/


https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814621026558






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