Sencha Zairai

Sometimes it pays to go wild: unlike most of the teas in our selection, this sencha was created neither from bushes with a carefully-manicured pedigree, nor from old trees whose parentage is lost to time. Rather, 'zairai' refers to plants grown from local seeds, meaning material produced under that moniker varies strongly from region to region. These leaves hail from the famous village of Hoshino, where they were given a medium chumushi steaming for a balanced and mildly sweet brew, with more mild alfalfa and raw sugarcane than mown grass in the cup, and a bit of apple peel astringency.