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 ichibancha from Shizuoka is enormous. What makes it worth learning is exactly that range, and the fact that most of the price and quality variation is legible if you know where to look.
Look for deeply green, uniform needle-shaped leaves with a fresh, grassy-sweet scent; yellowing or brown flecks indicate poor storage or an older harvest. Ichibancha (first flush, spring) commands the premium: leaves are softer, more aromatic, and more umami-forward than later harvests. Fukamushi (deep-steamed) sencha has smaller, powdery-looking leaf fragments and produces a cloudier, more intense cup, which is a stylistic choice rather than a defect. Vacuum-sealed, foil-packed material from the current harvest year is the baseline quality signal for a loose-leaf purchase.
Shizuoka produces the majority of Japanese sencha and sets the benchmark for the style; Kawane and Makinohara are sub-regions worth knowing by name. Kagoshima (Chiran, Kirishima, Makizono) runs warmer and delivers a rounder, less astringent cup from the same Yabukita cultivar. Uji sencha is rarer and pricier, prized for its balance of sweetness and savory depth. Cultivar matters beyond Yabukita: Okumidori pulls sweeter, Saemidori more umami, Kanaya Midori more floral, and single-cultivar labeling is a reliable premium signal.
Western: 70-75°C, 2-3 g per 200 ml, 60-90 seconds in ceramic or glass; second infusion at the same temperature runs 30-40 seconds. Gongfu: 70°C, 4-5 g per 60 ml in a kyusu or small ceramic vessel, 20-30 seconds first steep, increasing by 10-15 seconds each subsequent steep; expect 5-6 infusions from quality ichibancha. Cold brew amplifies sweetness and cuts astringency sharply: 1 g per 100 ml cold water, 8-12 hours refrigerated, no heating required.
Everyday commodity sencha from Shizuoka runs €15-35 (about $16-38) per 100 g. A careful single-cultivar ichibancha from an identified garden reaches €40-80 (about $43-86) per 100 g. Above €80 (about $86), expect gyokuro-grade production attention.
Prices reviewed June 2026
Fukamushi Sencha (Deep-steamed)
Deep-steaming produces a cloudier, more saturated cup that trades sencha's bright clarity for body and mouthfeel.
Gyokuro
The shade-grown extreme: far more umami and sweetness, but also far more price and brewing precision required.
Kabusecha
Partial shading for one to two weeks puts kabusecha between sencha's brightness and gyokuro's sweetness.
Shincha
The very first release of each spring's sencha harvest, prized for ephemeral freshness; same production method, different timing.
The word sencha (steeped tea) was established partly to distinguish loose-leaf brewing from the powdered tea that dominated Japanese tea culture before the 18th century. Nagatani Soen's 1738 development of hand-rolling technique in Uji is credited with cementing the loose-leaf sencha style that now accounts for most Japanese tea production.