Tanba "Droplets of the Season" Sencha - 2023 Shincha

Tea Profile Type: Sencha Cultivar: Blend of cultivars Region: Tanba-Sasayama Farmer: Tanaka Hideki   Tasting Notes Aroma: Earthy, bamboo forest, oolong, apricot. Taste: Wild mountain herbs, mugwort, matcha. Sweet and savory. Layered.   The Story This is a complex wild tea from the mountain valleys of Tanba-Sasayama, a place with a 1,200 year history of tea. The tea trees here have their own terroir - they are wild, and kept that way by people like Tanaka-san. Tanaka-san nurtures his tea fields in a non-interventional way - with no sprays or pesticides, life runs its natural course in the fields. He tells us his bug-bitten fields are the better for it - the leaves react to the bites, strengthening themselves by summoning deeper nutrients into the tea trees. The flavor we get is wild, deep, and layered. It is floral. It is savory, vegetal. It has woody umami, and a balance of sweetness and bitterness, all together. It is sensitive to temperature, and it changes significantly