What is this tea?

[jextxadore]

Hi all,

Found a tea in Jusco (department store with a supermarket) tonight. HKD60 for 100g (~USD8). It's clearly a green tea…I think.

It's labelled 八女茶 (Yamecha) in large, but on the side says 福みどり, which Google translates as "Fuzhou green". Fuzhou's in Fujian so…is this a Chinese-grown tea or…:?:

Smell: Like matcha but also a bit like a hayfield in summer on a farm by the sea.

Taste: Reminds me of matcha (the kind you taste in ice cream — I don't think I've ever drunk real matcha before) only not so sweet. Rather grassy and leaves my mouth a bit dry…tiny hint of bitterness, but neither in a medicinal nor astringent (which would give me a bit of sour as well) way.

I'm brewing with about 3g to 200ml, ~80ºC at a guess (I boiled water then opened the lid and waited for 5 minutes in an ACd room at 25ºC), for about 1.5 minutes. As expected (and I really wasn't expecting much, given the price), it's lost ~70% of its flavour this second infusion.

But my question is: What is this tea?

Oh, and on the nutrition label it says "Yame-cha Tea Fuku Midori green tea".

[Chip]

... my guess is Fuku Midori sencha from Yame on the island of Kyushu Japan.

Any photos of the tea and brew?

[jextxadore]

I didn't get any photos of the liquor before I finished it but from googling images of sencha, it's kind of that colour…reminiscent of the green of grass just before it turns to hay?

[Chip]

Does the label say fuku or fuka?

Midori is Japanese for green.

[jextxadore]

The label says fuku.

[Chip]

Hm, fuka I could understand. In fact there is a tea called Fuka Midori from Den's which I would transalate as "deep green."

[bambooforest]

I think FukuMidori may be a cultivar.

http://www.thes-du-japon.com/index.php? ... cts_id=187

This link above has a tea that's said to be

Fukumidori

cultivar.

[Chip]

That would make sense.

[jextxadore]

So conclusion is that it's a cheap sencha. Sorted!

…that tin of powder I bought the other day was also sencha, I have since found (konacha). Matcha seems to be impossible to find in HK…(this was ~USD10 for 30g).

Anyway, thanks for the help guys.

Now for the bitter lessons of learning how to brew this properly.

[Drax]

By the way, 'fuzhou' was an odd translation of 福 (potentially Chinese, but then it's just 'fu'). In Japanese, it would be 'fuku.'