This tea needed a special label and name. Knowledge binds, [curiosity releases]. If you constrict yourself to the path of normalcy in tea or life, you’ll never experience its (or your) true potential. How fascinating are the edges of this world! The label had to be over the top — I want you, or whoever you give this to, to have a visceral reaction to it. I want you to understand that this label is as different from regular acceptable marketing as gyokuro is from other tea in the world.

Gyokuro is very different than other teas, in a sense that it should be brewed potently and drank in small amounts for the best effect. A standard brewing method for gyokuro is using 5 grams tea with 50mL water at 50 degrees Celsius and brewed for 2 to 3 minutes (I prefer 3). It gets its flavor from growing in forced shade by blocking the sun with mats of woven rice straw.

————-

Notes about this tea, what it is to me, and in comparison to other gyokuro

If I had to choose 2 tea styles to represent my preference of tea to the world, I would choose gyokuro and phoenix oolong.

This is my second time to sell gyokuro in my shop. Here I have a chance to work with a producer who is an all star in the tea tasting world, Hiroshi Kobayashi. There is a traditional ranking system in Japan that is used for things like Shogi, Go, Kyuudo, and other traditional martial arts. This system is known as Kyu-Dan Ranking, Kyu is a student rank, Dan is a teacher rank. In things like Go, you start at 15 Kyu and work your way up to 1 Kyu, afterwards you must pass a test to become a professional and enter the world of ‘Dan’. Beginning from 1-Dan and aspiring to climb to the highest rank of 10-Dan. In regards to tea, and its relevance here, Hiroshi Kobayashi is a 10-Dan tea appraiser, the absolute highest level. There are 13 people (currently living) across Japan who have this ranking and Hiroshi is the only one in Kyoto.

While gyokuro can be made in any place from any cultivar (cultivated variety) of the tea bush, the best gyokuro’s in the country consistently emerge from 3 places: Yame (Fukuoka), Kyotanabe (Kyoto), Okabe (Shizuoka), and in recent competitions all the top ranking teas are made from the same cultivar (Saemidori) — Saemidori is exceptionally fragrant and has a stong ‘yellow colored’ (synasthesia thing) core. Saemidori is very showy, very loud, its presence cannot be ignored — it’s a wild beast in a cage.

This year, the gyokuro I’ll feature is made by another cultivar known as Uji-Midori. Uji-Midori is not registered officially with the government, and is only found in small holdings across southern Kyoto. It is a high umami variety used exclusively in elite tencha (matcha) and gyokuro production. Using the earlier analogy, Uji-Midori gyokuro is clearly not a wild beast in a cage, but a beast that understands its situation — that lashing out is futile, and decides to accept subjugation. How very appropriate for a bondage label!

Honestly, I do believe that to appreciate this gyokuro at the deepest level, you must first understand ‘what’ and ‘how ferocious’ the wild beast types of gyokuro are. Having a couple experiences with other gyokuro’s first before coming to this would give you a very profound understanding of it all. This gyokuro is a-typical to me, and in fact, in my life, I have only had 1 gyokuro like it. I remember the day clearly. August 5th 2020. I ordered 2 historically significant gyokuro, both unavailable outside Japan, so I had them sent to my father in law in Osaka, which he then sent to me via courier. One was the top gyokuro from Yamamotoyama (touched on below), the other was from Mitsuboshi-En Kanbayashisannyu-Honten which I believe is the oldest tea shop in Japan, and at one point a tea advisor to the shogunate. Both gyokuros were great experiences, the yamamotoyama offering being similar to all the other gyokuros I had up until that point ‘a wild beast’ in every sense, the Mitsuboshi-En offering being… remarkably soft and sweet, opposite to the forcefulness of the former, very submissive. It was the only time (before now, with this tea) that I tried this type of submissive gyokuro. Gyokuro that tastes like this is certainly not the majority.

Kyotanabe is an area that I haven’t visited yet, though I hope to visit in March or April of 2024. Mr. Kobayashi’s land that he grows this gyokuro on is just off the Kizu River. Between Tagiki and Tanabe, North of JR Kyotanabe station. I wanted to get this tea into the shop, so this article like so many others isn’t as polished as it should be. Below these maps I’ll put my brewing notes and impressions.

Tasting Notes:
First impressions of the tea (literally my first time tasting it)
1:10, 3 minutes, 50 degree C water.
infusion 1) aromas of sweet asparagus, raw scallops, wheatgrass, fresh shaved truffles
infusion 2) aromas are sweet, candylike, kiwi? The flavor is linear, laser focused, direct and punchy. It’s like the first lap was a warm up for a racer, now they’re going full speed. Something about it reminds me of king oyster mushrooms, I think it’s the chewy, thickness of the liquid.
infusion 3) grassy, west coast oysters, sea asparagus, wet park grass, rainy day, easy drinking
*Notably, each infusion was an interesting color for gyokuro. A dull hazy green. Seemed unusual for Japanese tea in general.

The next day
1:10, 3 minutes, 50 degree C water.
infusion 1) It’s sweet. Reminds me of a tarragon flavored sweet cream.
*I ate some pears before drinking this, maybe the tea is reacting with the tannins in the pear skins. It really lit up a bitter tannic note in the tea that I didn’t observe tasting it yesterday. The freshness of the pear really stood out after this sensation subsided.
**Rolling my breath and playing with the flavor afterwards, it seemed I could hear the sharp lasery sounds of tension cables wiggling and flexing (as you would find on a suspension bridge). I had the thought of a suspension bridge obscured by a fog rolling in, which hid a large shadowy figure over the bridge causing the cables stress and subsequent sounds.
*** I think the pears really did something here, gotta be careful with that I guess.
infusion 2) has a weird blue baby diaper aroma that some German pinot noir has. very round texture, apple + pear + basil

I wanted to try this less as an ‘espresso’ and more like an ‘americano’
1:60, 1 minute, 70 degrees C
The aroma was like the inedible seaweed that adorns the icey sinks and buckets of oyster bars. It was very east coast oystery, briny sea water, minerally, with a hint of sweetness I failed to compare to anything. The flavor was light and easy drinking, not really interesting, it had a lingering cooling effect in the mouth. The flavor is about half of what I want it to be.

1:30, 2 minutes, 70 degrees C
The aroma is full, and very Japanese — but in a way that’s hard to put into words. It smells like the inside of a Japanese building, not residential — but corporate. Like a bank tower? The flavor was more interesting than the previous 1:60 brew. It reminds me of being in a park with grass cut very low, in the heat of late spring… then it became a little like algae, certain kinds of trees with big canopies, and a memory came up from my most recent trip to Japan.

I think it smells like this memory, but in conclusion, maybe 1:15 would be better… but wait, then it’s not like an americano at all… I guess trying 1:30 for 3 or 4 minutes might do better.

I got away from the americano version and tried playing with water composition to increase the depth of flavor at 1:10. I was very successful using something called ‘Third Wave Water’, an powdered mineral additive to Reverse Osmosis water that’s used in the coffee industry to improve extraction and flavor. It improved the sweetness, depth of flavor, and finish. Surprisingly the tetsubin I am using does very little to help with this teas flavor.

Below is some additional information I’ve gathered about gyokuro over the years. I hope you find it interesting.

Gyokuro is on my short lists of favorite teas. I read a book called ‘Tea of the Sages’ by Patricia Jane Graham which included the origin story of gyokuro. I’ll summarize the part about Gyokuro here:

Steeped teas whether sencha or bancha have been in production in Japan from the mid 1600s. Steeped tea only became a mainsteam hit in Japan after the year 1738 when a man named Nagatani Soen of the Yamamotoyama tea shop perfected the production techniques of growing and processing tea leaves for sencha. Until this time, steeped tea in Japan was only popular in Sinophile circles and not the general public.

Nagatani’s descendants continued to innovate and create higher qualities of tea in the market, eventually applying the shading technique used in the production of tencha (for matcha). Shading the tea plant helped the farmers deal with irregular/out of season frost problems. Shading the plant also had the benefit of increasing the caffeine content and reducing tannins in the finished tea.

The man credited with the application of shade growing to sencha and coining the term ‘Gyokuro’ (Jade Dew) is Yamamoto Tokujin. The name comes from the color of the juice expelled from the steamed gyokuro leaves once they have been put through the rolling process. Gyokuro has been available to the public since 1835.

After the invention of gyokuro, sencha’s popularity soared. For the first time ever interest for sencha surpassed matcha/chanoyu albeit only briefly. The complexities in the manufacturing process of gyokuro could only be supported by a high sales price which only connoisseurs could/would afford. Gyokuro became the standard tea for ‘sencha gatherings’ and only on the rare occasion would lower quality teas be used (sencha or bancha)

To this day Yamamotoyama is still in business. https://www.yamamotoyama.co.jp/index.html

——————————————————————————————————————–

A few other things I considered highlights in the book were:

‘To pre-modern Japanese, China embodied the highest civilized values. The ability to read and write in Chinese and possession of Chinese artifacts initially helped to distinguish those who belonged to elite Japanese society’

‘Formerly they (The Japanese) had grudgingly acknowledged China’s superiority. Now, as foreigners (the Manchurian’s) ruled China, the Japanese government could legitimately claim parity with and even superiority over China. Ming loyalists who settled in Japan reinforced perceptions that China was no longer the “Middle Kingdom” and that the new center of Chinese Confucian culture had shifted to Japan’

‘By maintaining or re-instituting antique Japanese forms that were closely modeled on those of ancient China, Japanese authorities reasoned that they had perpetuated the authentic culture from which latter-day China had deviated’

‘The Japanese political structure, which was based on military might and inherited birthright (The Shogun Era), was basically at odds with the Confucian philosophy’s dictate that the right to rule be mandated by moral conduct.’

‘According to Gettan, the early Japanese Zen monks understood the spiritual benefits derived from the taste of superb quality tea, but as chanoyu became formalized and adopted as an avocation by wealthy samurai and others, the emphasis shifted from the tea itself to an ostentatious display of material possessions. He implies that only Obaku monks and reclusive proponents of sencha remained true to the lofty ideals of their predecessors in their preference for fine-tasting tea brewed simply in a kettle in their humble homes.’

‘The final step necessary to the process of creating a sencha tea ceremony was for someone actively to promote it as an alternative avocation to chanoyu among the general population. This was accomplished by Baisao who championed sencha on the streets of Kyoto.’

‘Despite his many illustrious friends, Baisao seems to have lived in impoverishment, though happily, throughout his life. He charged customers no fixed price, but asked them to pay what they could by dropping coins into a hollow bamboo tube that he placed beside his stall. Nearby, a sign proclaimed that he was sorry for his inability to charge less than nothing, but urged patrons not to grudge him “one paltry sen”

‘I alone love the idleness
Of long summer days
Beside a fragrant brazier
Under ten thousand pines;
The sweltering heat
Of the human world
Cannot reach here;
Nor need I seek
The rare landscapes
Of the Sages ‘ realm.
I ladle my water
From pure Otawa springs;
My tea is grown in China
I have It sent from home.
Life’s greatest joy
Is to he free from care,
Yet still the world laughs
At my mind’s crazy turns.’

‘This place of mine,
so poor I’m often even out of water;
But I offer you an elixir
To change your very marrow.
You’ll find me in the pines,
By the Hall of a Thousand Buddhas,
Come take a drink — who knows?
You may reach Sagehood yourself.’

‘By 1738 sencha had become so popular that Nagatani Soen, a tea grower in Uji who was acquainted with Baisao, initiated specialized methods to produce a bright jade green-colored leaf tea, known as sencba, whose sweet-tasting flavor was particularly praised by Baisao. Nagatani selected the finest of the young leaves and, as is still done today, soaked them in water, steamed them to curtail their fermentation, and dried them over a grill. This new process replaced the older practice of oven roasting a mixture of tough twigs and old leaves.’

‘Shortly before he died, Baisao ceremoniously cast his tea utensils into a fire to prevent their becoming the cherished possessions of others, an act that consciously defied the chanoyu tradition of revering and placing great monetary value on the utensils made and owned by celebrated tea masters.’

‘Water for bancha was heated in heavy iron kettles called Tetsubin’s. Tetsubin’s were used only in the most informal services of Sencha.’

‘When metal kettles were used for sencha, the preference was for light weight, finer materials such as copper, silver, or gold.’

‘Kiyomizu ceramics are closely linked with sencha’

‘chanoyu is about knowledge, sencha is about purity of spirit.’

‘Though I cannot flee
From the world of corruption,
I can prepare tea
with water from a mountain stream
and put my heart to rest’