Special (特上) Blend
Special (特上) Blend is a fukamushi (deep-steamed) blend of Tsuyuhikari, Saemidori and Yabukita cultivars from ichibancha (spring) harvest. The blend is a mix of several Sonogi tea farmers, skilfully blended and refined by Ikeda Chaen.
Although the same cultivars are used in this blend as in the Superb Blend, the Special Blend has a clearly different character and is both more complex and refined in comparison.
Its umami has been toned down, and allows a dance of sweet, round, aromatic notes to come to the forefront. From vegetal notes of fresh peas to lighter floral hints, this elegant tea will keep you guessing at its changing flavours.
Brewing suggestion:
First brew – 5 gr / 120-200 ml / 60ºC / 50 sec
Second brew – brew slightly hotter ~80ºC, short brew of just a few seconds
Officially we would say that you can infuse the tea at least 3 times from the same tea leaves, but this tea, as with many of our other teas, you can definitely infuse more times.
Tamaryokucha
Tamaryokucha (玉緑茶) is Sonogi tea region’s speciality. In Nagasaki, ‘ocha’ (お茶) which means ‘tea’ is automatically assumed to be tamaryokucha. Ocha in other regions of Japan will usually be assumed to be sencha (煎茶) as it is by far the most prevalent tea throughout the rest of Japan.
Tamaryokucha in Sonogi region are by and large fukamushi (deep-steamed) style green teas. The processing of tamaryokucha is for a large part similar to a sencha, but has a few different processing steps at the end of the production process. This difference in processing causes the leaves to retain a more curly shape instead of the straight needle-style shape of sencha leaves.
Read more about our Ikeda Cha-en Tamaryokucha selection in our blog post.
