Posted by Bethan.

As a graduate of Chinese Studies and having spent a few years living in Shanghai and Beijing, my knowledge of Japan was limited before I visited recently to see JING’s customers and suppliers. I would go so far as to say that my opinion was negatively tinted with the Sino-Japanese rivalry that I had been exposed to whilst working in China, and I was certainly a more devoted drinker of Chinese green tea than Japanese.

However, after 10 days, I have been thoroughly converted. The Japanese take intense pride in their tea industry, and hotel rooms contain Japanese green tea and hojicha (roasted tea made from a mix of stem and leaf), without an ‘English’ breakfast tea bag insight. The tea itself is of note.

It was the production of gyokuro tea which really took my breath away though. I travelled to Uji province, and the small town of Wazuka to visit the tea fields and our renowned Japanese gyokuro master.

I had a basic knowledge of gyokuro before arriving, but had my mind truly opened to the skill involved in making this tea. Gyokuro is not well known in Europe but it is the highest regarded tea in Japan. It can be machine produced or hand made, and is made in extremely small quantities in comparison to sencha, which is Japan’s most heavily produced tea, accounting for 70% of national production.

Gyokuro tea bushes lie at a lower altitude than sencha, and are covered for 20-30 days before picking in order to encourage the teas to photosynthesise, producing a sweeter, darker leaf. The finished tea leaf looks like thin needles that could be mistaken as being cut into a uniform shape. However, each leaf is actually meticulously rolled and kneaded in order to create the needles. This requires 3kg of loose leaf tea to produce 550g of gyokuro, and when produced by hand, the process takes 6 hours.

Our master is a national treasure, renowned as the number one gyokuro producer in Japan. He is a native of Uji province which produced the best gyokuro in Japan, but due to his skill, he has spent over 3 years of his life in each tea producing region in Japan teaching the tea masters in each region how to make this tea properly.

In his 70’s now, his expressive eyes glittered as he explained to me that his father taught him how to make the tea, and he has done nothing but carefully produce gyokuro ever since. The result is that he has no finger prints – worn away by rolling and kneading tea leaves over the years, he only discovered this when he was leaving Japan in the 1980s, and they tried to take his prints three times with no luck! His hands felt like thick leather but he seemed non-plussed by the sacrifice that he had made for his craft!

The Japanese Emperor himself has awarded our master with recognition for his work, and only his first tea disciple comes close to his skill in gyokuro production. This man has been taught and worked with him for 40 years, but cannot replace his master in the hearts of Japan.

Tea fields around Wazuka, Uji, Japan

The air in the mountains around his farm in Wazuka was heavy with mist and a light rain was falling when I arrived – perfect conditions for the tea bushes to flourish. The gyokuro season had ended the week before I arrived, so the covers of the bushes lay discarded at the side of the tea gardens, and I was able to drink some of the finest tea I have ever tried.

Gyokuro is not a tea that you should expect to drink in large quantities, it is something to be prepared in quantities of less than 200ml and to savour. The incredible production, results in a thick, glycerous drink which is often described as ‘soup-like’ by first time drinkers. It tastes like nothing I have ever experienced in other foods, heavy with ‘umami’, impossible to describe as it can’t be compared to much, but it is amazing.

The carefully rolled leaves have a blue tint to their dark green, shiny surface, which slowly disappears as the bright green colour comes through when the tea is made. Extremely cool water should be used when making the tea – 40 degree water for the first infusion, waiting 3 minutes to pour, increasing by 10 degree increments and reducing infusion time by 1 minute and then 30 seconds for each infusion.

Eating gyokuro tea leaves - quite delicious!

As the tea leaves themselves are extremely soft, they are fantastic to eat. We had them with a mix of soy sauce and lemon juice, and it was delicious.

I have never met a man like our gyokuro master before, and have never drunk any tea like his either. Whilst my Chinese friends may be disappointed with me saying so, this tea surpasses any other that I have drunk across the world in its uniqueness. Although it will not become my daily cuppa, I will certainly be indulging in it as often as possible in the future!

The tea I drank is available here.