Regular (並茶) Blend
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.
This tamaryokucha is a blend of nibancha (second season) harvest leaves from different Sonogi tea farmers, skilfully blended and refined by Ikeda Chaen.
The Regular Blend is made purely from yabukita cultivar leaves. As Ikeda Chaen’s name ‘Regular’ indicates, this is an excellent daily drinker tamaryokucha.
It is mild and round, less powerful and vibrant than the Superb and Special blends. Regular has a vegetal character balanced with a light sweetness and some soft starchy notes of chestnut, blanched almonds and perhaps a hint of marzipan.
In the photo gallery, you can see the colours of the first (left) and second (right) infusion next to each other. In comparison to the ichibancha (spring harvest) tamaryokucha blends, you can see there is a much less pronounced difference between the two infusions.
Read more about our Ikeda Chaen Tamaryokucha selection in our blog post.
