05.11.09
2009 Shincha
The bulk of the freshly harvested 2009 green tea, currently in “shincha” form, has been released now for a little over a week. In case you are not familiar with the term “shincha”, this refers to the first harvested green tea which is packaged immediately from harvesting and put up for sale. One can buy first harvest green tea throughout the year, but the bulk of this is put into cold storage and is released as needed. Shincha is only available for a few months at the most and is the freshest green tea one can purchase.
We’re still getting in different shincha green teas just about every day, as some of these green teas are released later than others. There is usually a stampede of customers who eagerly await the first release, so every year we strive to get that out to them as soon as possible. That said, some of the “late” release shincha is every bit as good as the early released versions and there is a reward waiting for those willing to wait a little. For example, we have yet to receive our organic shincha green teas (these are usually a little bit behind due to the way they are grown), and we are still waiting on our venerable Uji Sencha Miyabi to come out.
Just a few days ago, we received the 2009 Chiran Sencha, shown below. Priced very competetively, this is a very tasty green tea and I personally think this is one of the best green tea values one can buy on the internet. The quality is high, the taste is great. This green tea comes from the old samurai town of Chiran, also famous as a training base for kamikaze pilots during WWII. Anyway, if you are new to green tea, you can’t go wrong with this item! The only word of caution I would give is that it is deep steamed, which means it also has very fine leaf particles and can clog teapots. This tea should be brewed in a Japanese teapot with green tea in mind, one that has a very fine stainless steel mesh infuser screen.
While I wasn’t really looking for another deep steamed green tea (fukamushi-cha), I was sent a sample of a very stellar green tea that I simply could not pass up. Introducing 
New to our lineup is Uji Organic Matcha. What surprised me about this item was how reasonable the price was when we obtained it. While not as high a matcha as either our Kaoru or Kaoru “Supreme” organic matchas, if you are on a budget then this item would be hard to beat. It is grown under completely organic methods and, as is required to obtain the organic certification, is also processed in separate facilities.
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