Nibancha

Nibancha is Japan's second picking, taken in early summer after the first has regrown. It is brisker, greener and more astringent than ichibancha, and it is the backbone of everyday Japanese tea: most bancha, most hojicha, most genmaicha and most cheap sencha blends are built on it or on what comes after it.

Window: June into July
Vocabulary: Japanese numbered pick
Growth: Fast, in full summer sun
Cup: Brisk, grassy, astringent

The tea year

Typical windows, not dates. Every one of these moves with the weather, the latitude and the year: the pages say by how much.

What it is

The second numbered picking of the growing year, harvested from shoots the bush pushed out after the first was cut. Because the plant is now growing in warmth and full light rather than on winter reserves, it is a different leaf, not merely a later one. Japanese gardens in warmer prefectures go on to a sanbancha and sometimes a fourth picking, each step further from the character ichibancha had.

When it happens

June into July, roughly six to eight weeks after that garden's first picking. The interval matters more than the month: nibancha is defined by the bush having had time to regrow, so a garden that picked early in April reaches its second round earlier than one that picked in mid May.

What it does to the leaf

Everything the first picking had going for it now runs the other way. The plant is growing fast in strong summer light, which drives catechin synthesis hard and leaves amino acids relatively depleted, and the stored winter reserves that fed the first flush are gone. The result is a leaf with markedly more catechin per gram and much less theanine, which is the entire difference in the cup stated as chemistry.

What it tastes like

Brisk, grassy and frankly astringent, with the sweetness and marine depth of ichibancha largely absent. That is not automatically a fault. The robustness is exactly what makes it work roasted into hojicha, blended with toasted rice as genmaicha, or drunk cold in quantity through a Japanese summer, all of which are uses that would waste a delicate first picking.

How to read it on a label

You will almost never see the word, because nobody advertises the second picking. It is what a Japanese green tea is when the package makes no harvest claim and the price is low, and it is the honest answer to why one sencha costs four times another that looks identical. Where a package does name it, that is usually a producer being straightforward rather than apologetic, and it tends to accompany a tea priced to be drunk daily.

What people get wrong

Judging it against ichibancha and concluding Japanese tea is overrated. They are different products aimed at different moments, and a nibancha asked to behave like a gyokuro will fail in a way that says nothing about either. The practical error is brewing it as gently: cool water and a short steep leave nibancha tasting like weak grass, where it actually rewards a hotter, more decisive brew that makes something of its briskness.

Teas defined by this picking

Where this term is used

Japan