|
 Happily,
the teas of Japan are uniquely and
quintessentially Japanese. And in Japan, tea
cultivation, leaf manufacture and tea drinking
practices have been raised to a fine art that is
unsurpassed. In contrast to the thousands of
teas in all of the six classes produced by
neighboring China, Japan produces fewer than
twenty types of tea, all of which fall into one
class: green tea.
Japanese teas are cultivated in numerous
locations on the main island of Honshu as well
as in several regions of Kyushu Island in the
south. While distinctly different in appearance
from Chinese or Korean green teas, many of
Japan’s green teas bear a striking similarity
one to another. Common traits are a vivid green
color, long, needle-shaped leaves and bright,
mouth-filling flavors that can be described as
vegetal, kelpy, buttery and sweet. Japanese teas
undergo a ‘steaming’ step in their production
(most Chinese green teas do not ) which adds to
the rich, deep-green color and the distinctive
flavor.
Japan has been producing tea for centuries, but
Japan has progressed from crafting handmade tea
to the introduction of machine-manufactured tea
in the nineteenth century to computer-automated
machinery in the twentieth century. Today, most
Japanese tea is made from leaf that has been
mechanically plucked from tea bushes that grow
in meticulously groomed tea gardens at
relatively low altitudes. This leaf is processed
by sophisticated, computer-driven, high-tech
machinery in state-of-the-art modern
leaf-processing facilities. |
