Japanese green
Japanese greens are defined by steam-fixing rather than pan-firing, which produces the deep vegetal, marine, and savory-umami character that makes them immediately distinct from Chinese styles in the same category. Shading before harvest increases amino acids and reduces catechins, splitting the family toward the umami-rich shaded styles (Gyokuro, Matcha, Kabusecha) versus the everyday sun-grown styles (Sencha, Bancha, Hojicha). Steaming duration further divides Sencha into light-steam (asamushi) and deep-steam (fukamushi) variants with noticeably different texture and intensity.
Styles in this family
Sencha
Sencha is Japan's workhorse and its reference point: roughly 70% of all Japanese tea is sencha, yet the gap between a careless supermarket bag and a careful…
Fukamushi Sencha (Deep-steamed)
Fukamushi sencha is regular sencha steamed two to three times longer than usual, and that single change rewrites the cup. The extended steaming breaks down the…
Shincha
Shincha (new tea) is the first sencha of the year, the opening pick of the spring first flush, sold fresh and seasonal. It is the same production as sencha but…
Bancha
Bancha is the everyday Japanese green made from the later harvests and the larger, more mature leaves that sencha leaves behind. It is milder, lower in…
Kabusecha
Kabusecha (covered tea) is shaded for roughly a week to ten days before harvest, a fraction of gyokuro's three weeks, which places it squarely between sencha…
Gyokuro
Gyokuro is the style that shows what deliberately stressing a tea plant by covering it against sunlight for three weeks or more can produce: something that…
Tencha (Matcha Base)
Tencha is the leaf that becomes matcha: shade-grown like gyokuro, steamed, then dried flat without rolling and stripped of stems and veins, leaving papery green…
Matcha
Matcha is the only major tea where the milling step is as important as the cultivar and the shade. What you grind, how you grind it, and how long ago it was…
Hojicha
Hojicha is what happens when secondary material, stems and lower-grade leaves, gets roasted until the chlorophyll is gone and the Maillard reaction takes over.…
Genmaicha
Genmaicha pairs a modest green tea, usually bancha and sometimes sencha, with roasted and partly popped brown rice. It began as a thrift tea to stretch leaf and…
Kukicha
Kukicha (stem tea, also called twig tea) is made from the stalks and stems sorted out during sencha and gyokuro production rather than from the leaf. The result…
Konacha
Konacha (powder tea) is made from the fine particles, dust and small leaf bits sifted out while refining sencha and gyokuro. It is not matcha: matcha is…
Mecha
Mecha (bud tea) is made from the leaf buds and tips sifted out while refining sencha and gyokuro, rolled into small tight pellets because young buds curl as…
Aracha (Unrefined)
Aracha is not really a finished tea; it is the crude tea that comes straight off a Japanese farm's primary processing line, before a finisher sorts and re-fires…
Tamaryokucha
Tamaryokucha is a Japanese green tea that skips sencha's final straightening step, so the leaf keeps a curled, comma-like shape; it is also widely called…
Kamairicha (Pan-fired, Japan)
Kamairicha is the rare Japanese green that is pan-fired rather than steamed, an outlier in a country where well over 90% of green tea is fixed by steam. The…