Honestly speaking, I’ve never heard of tea production in Okinawa until about two years ago. Come to think of it, I shouldn’t even be surprised. It’s like located in between Kyushu and Taiwan, and roughly across the sea from the Chinese provinces of Fujian and Zhejiang, all which are tea-producing areas.
I managed to get hold of this 100% Okinawa black tea last year. Kanigawa Seicha has been producing tea in Haneji, Nago City since 1956 when a tea plantation was started on the site of a former copper mine.
The company initially produced only green tea, but began experimenting with black tea production in the third generation.
By 2015, they have a full-scale production and sales of black tea. In the following years, their black tea had even won in a number of tea competitions.
Kanigawa Seicha is currently operated by its fourth generation producer who is trained in agricultural technology.
Anyway, this standard-grade black tea is a blend of three cultivars, namely Benifuuki, Yutakamidori, and Yabukita.
Interestingly, the front label of the packaging stated that the leaf type is BOP, which stands for Broken Orange Pekoe, a Western term that’s not commonly used in describing Japanese tea. It refers to the broken pieces of tea leaves, as opposed to whole leaves.
For a clearer definition, I looked up the term. According to the Tea Exporters Association of Sri Lanka, BOP is “a popular leaf size which helps to bring out a good balance of taste and strength. Well made, neat leaf of medium size without excessive stalk or fibre. There should not be any fine particles (fanning & dust) which are not true-to-grade.”
Sure enough, the leaves in the 40g pack are definitely BOP. I really like the woody aroma of the dry leaves.
I used 4g of tea leaves and steeped them in 200ml water of around 95°C for 2 minutes.
The resulting tea liquor was bright orange. It tasted richly sweet with no trace of bitterness and the texture was almost velvety in the mouth.
The tea was good up to subsequent three steepings, using the same brewing parameters.
The used leaves showed clearly how broken they were and I saw there were some broken stems too.
I read somewhere that Kanigawa Seicha is trying to produce their original tea cultivars. That would be interesting because Okinawa surely has a different terroir and climate compare to the main Japanese islands. Might even be slightly different from those tea-producing islands off the coast of Kyushu such as Yakushima and Tanegashima.
Oh by the way, I think the anosmia is back. I have trouble distinguishing aromas recently. The condition resurfaced after I had suffered a constantly blocked nose and used a lot of nasal spray to clear it. Huhu.
茶柱 The Floating Tea Stem 