05.09.05
Shincha & First Flush Green Tea
This topic causes quite a bit of confusion. Since the first harvest just came out, perhaps now would be a good time to discuss this.
First, a few terms to know. First flush and first harvest green tea are the same thing, that being the green tea harvested from the first harvest in late April-early May, depending on the weather. The growers here in Japan can get a good idea when the harvest will take place based on when the cherry trees bloom first, and this year both the cherry blossoms and the first harvest were a week behind.
Shincha - This means “new tea” in Japanese. This refers to the first flush (aka first harvest) sencha green tea that is immediately packaged and put up for sale after being harvested and processed.
About a month or so after the first harvest is the second harvest. All together, there are about 3-4 harvests, ending in fall. The quality of tea goes down with each successive harvest. While the second harvest isn’t too bad, if you want “the best”, you will want the a first flush green tea.
The key thing to understand is this - while all shincha is first harvest, not all first harvest is shincha. Why is that? The reason for that is most of the first harvest is put away into cold storage so that it can be pulled throughout the year as needed. If you want first harvest tea in say, November, what you will actually get (provided it wasn’t sitting on a shelf since April - bad!) is a tea that was pulled from deep refrigeration and packaged right before it was sold. This green tea is knows as “kuradashi sencha”, which means basically “sencha pulled from the storehouse” in English.
Technically, the “freshest” green tea of the entire year is the shincha availabe from late April through about June or July, as supplies last. Those first harvest green teas taken throughout the rest of the year are also quite good; you’ll be hard pressed to tell the difference.
Gyokuro, the green tea grown under shade, is considered to be the highest quality, most expensive of the Japanese green teas, and there is only one harvest. Additionally, most gyokuro is aged for a few months under refrigeration, so there really is no “shincha” gyokuro per se. Most teas like genmaicha, bancha, houjicha come from the 3rd harverst or later. While not considered as high class as a first flush sencha or gyokuro, these teas are nevertheless quite tasty and should not be discounted.
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