Tony Gebely from Tea Epicure is offering a tea tasting guide for just one dollar! I learned about it through his newsletter. The guide consists of two parts. The...
At what Age can a Child Start Drinking Tea?
Tea contains caffeine, although its total content varies depending on the type of tea. Pregnant women are advised to limit or totally stop their caffeine intake, and the same...
Chakouan Ureshino Kamairicha
Tea from the Ureshino region (Saga and Nagasaki prefectures) is well known in Japan, especially kamairicha. The most interesting about this type of green tea is that it’s made...
Cultivating Femininity: Women and Tea Culture in Edo and Meiji Japan (Book Review)
Nowadays, most of the practitioners of the Japanese tea ceremony are women. But for a very long time it was a cultural activity dominated by men. Through this book...
The Shizu-7132 Tea Cultivar
Shizu-7132 (静7132) is an unregistered Japanese tea cultivar whose main characteristic is its unique aroma of cherry blossom (sakura). I can’t think of a better aroma to represent spring...
Ikkyu Kiri
In this blog there aren’t many reviews of tamaryokucha because it’s an uncommon Japanese tea. But luckily, I received this sample from Ikkyu. Basically, tamaryokucha is the same as...
Furuta Oribe
Sen no Rikyū, the most famous master of the Japanese Tea Ceremony, taught his disciples to “do things differently”. Most of them either kept doing the same, or just...
Podcast 045: Japanese Tea Cultivars with Noli Ergas
I had been wanting to record a podcast about Japanese tea cultivars for a long time. My chance finally came after speaking with Noli Ergas from Sugimoto Tea. Why...
Wakoen Arabikicha
If I’m not mistaken, arabikicha can be literally translated as “coursely ground tea”. This product sold by Wakoen is a high quality green tea powder made from kabusecha leaves....
Podcast 044: Wakoen
In this episode I interviewed Daisuke Horiguchi and Kyle Ketner of Wakoen. I was surprised by how much information they had to share. We talk about the history of...
What I’ve Learned after Starting the Online Tea Tasting Experience
I’ve been offering the online tea tasting experience for two months, and while it had a slow start I did receive customers. The idea came to me after the...
Sugimoto Tea Sencha Okumidori
I’ve enjoyed tasting the single cultivar tea samples that Sugimoto Tea has given me. This one is a fukamushi sencha, first harvest, from Shizuoka prefecture. The Okumidori cultivar is...