World Green Tea Contest 2021 results

Taiwan teas lead in the list of awarded products with 17 awards won this year, in this annual contest organised by the World Green Tea Association headquartered in Shizuoka, Japan. This was followed by Japan with 11 awarded products, China (6), Thailand (2) and South Korea (1). This year the call for entries started from …

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Special Focus on Shizuoka: Revisiting Makinohara Plateau, the largest area of tea plantations in Japan

Makinohara Plateau is one of Japan's leading tea producing areas and also its largest in terms of acreage, home to many tea plantations and tea-related facilities. Earlier this year I have written about two tea plantations of different sizes found in this area. In this post I will highlight on the tea museum and a …

Tea tasting: Kan’un (Gokase Midori)

This is a limited edition tea from last year's harvest. Limited because it was a bug-bitten baisen koucha or roasted black tea. There aren't many teas that are marketed as bug-bitten in Japan. The bug here refers to unka or planthoppers that typically appear during summer. They bite on the tea leaves and this causes …

Tea tasting: Hinohara Koucha (Hinohara Masako)

It took me a while to finally get around to taste this Japanese black tea, which I had bought in January from the post-event webshop of the virtual 19th National Black Tea Summit. However, it took me even longer to write this post, because the tea producer Toda Masako-san had passed away at the end …

Japanese Tea Marathon (Finale) +thoughts

Day 15 (Aug 8) of Japanese Tea Marathon was also the final day of this amazing virtual event. We finished off in Shizuoka, the top tea-producing prefecture in Japan, having ranked No.1 consistently since 1883. However, as reported by Kyodo News in May, Shizuoka has been overtaken by Kagoshima in terms of green tea output, …

Japanese Tea Marathon (Days 11-14)

The virtual journey across tea regions continued in central Japan for two days before heading up to northern Kanto. Day 11 (Aug 4) Mie Place:Mie, currently the third largest tea-producing prefecture in Japan. Are we still in Kansai region? Technically or geographically, yes, but Mie by modern demography standards is considered as part of central …

Japanese Tea Marathon (Days 8-10)

In the past three days, the Japanese Tea Marathon took us to the tea production areas of the Kansai region. If you have missed my previous summary posts, they can be found here (Days 1-4) and here (Days 5-7). Day 8 (July 31) Kyoto Place:Kyoto, an ever-popular tourist destination, is also the headquarters of the …