That long as I worded article. That's even longer than I have mentioned Mr. Akiyama Katsuhide . This is a tea producer emeritus of Shizuoka Prefecture, Fuji city. I met him on the occasion of World O-Cha Festival to discuss among other project occupying my evenings ample for some time. Just as Hiruma Yoshiaki (with whom I am in contact about the same subject, but our respective agendas did not allow me to meet) is a kind of adventurer tea. It does not carry less than forty different cultivars. In an industry where the Japanese tea cultivar Yabukita dominates over 80% of the cultivated area, it is more important for him to bring more diversity to the Japanese tea, sencha in particular, through the wealth of cultivars of tea plants. It grows so much in the power of cultivars that stubbornly continues to present each year in support of the teas produced with varieties other than Yabukita, which unfortunately remains the only cultivar to be eligible for podium. Not that Yabukita is better than all others, it is only, I think, that the scoring criteria are not suitable for anything other than Yabukita ...
Meanwhile, Akiyama-san carries many varieties, some very rare, and continues to introduce new ones.
I wanted to introduce today a little friendly and mostly original sencha from the "adventures" from Mr. Akiyama. This tea he calls nicchû-gassaku 日中 合作, "production in Sino-Japanese". My translation is as always very bad, so let's focus on content. It is a blend of three varieties: the classic Japanese Yabukita complementing the heart of this product, the Chinese cultivars and Jinxuan 金 萱 Cuiyu 翠玉. These cultivars grown in Japan! What a surprise for me. If I knew that many cultivars crossbred with Chinese or Taiwanese cultivars (eg Musashi-kaori, Luanze counts among his ancestors), and even India (Inzatsu131 whose mother is a cultivar of Assam, and an unknown father (!)), cultivars wulong , operated in Japan, at the foot of Mount Fuji, and to make sencha, how wonderful!
Liqueur is also a pleasant surprise, a bright yellow-green, translucent to amazing for a tea part of whose leaves are still fine.
Let's go to the heart of the matter. Akiyama-san has not brought two Chinese cultivars diplomatic purposes. It is the perfume of interest. The bet is successful, however slight, that releases the perfume beautiful liqueur is creamy and flowery, reminiscent of jasmine. We're obviously not in a wulong Taiwanese mountain, but we go beyond the field of Japanese Sencha usual.
The flavor is also rather unsettling, overall, our're dealing with a lightweight and balanced sencha, sweet but not sickly sweet, mild and refreshing astringency. But there are little details that trouble, suggest something else, a great taste in the milk line and flowery perfume.
This tea is more astonishing, it really is very good and enjoyable. It demonstrates the possibilities, which ultimately seem endless, tea, Japan, Taiwan, China or elsewhere. There is no boundary for tea, each tradition can only gain in learning from one another.