Hon Gyokuro Kusanagi

Hon Gyokuro Kusanagi is an impressive Japanese green tea. Gyokuro (玉露) roughly translates as “noble dewdrop”. What makes our Gyokuro special: before the harvest, it was shaded with rice straw mats for almost 21 days. This fills the tea leaves with plenty of chlorophyll and the amino acid L-theanine, which gives them an intense color and a bold flavor – and they lose almost all of their bitterness. Unlike sencha, gyokuro is mostly enjoyed on special occasions in Japan.

Taste

Hon Gyokuro Kusanagi tastes wonderfully fresh and has the full umami that is typical of high-quality Japanese gyokuro. As it cools down a little, notes of passion fruit and mango slowly emerge.

Origin

Our gyokuro comes from a farm in Japan with a long tradition. The tea garden is located in the Uji region of central Japan and produces tea of top quality. Uji is known for producing some of the finest teas in all of Japan. The tea garden lies in the middle of a coniferous forest, and the trees protect it from outside environmental influences. Because the farm avoids monocultures, the plants are less susceptible to insects. This tea was picked in mid-April.

• Origin: Uji, Japan
• Shading: almost 21 days with rice straw mats
• Harvest: mid-April
• Caffeine: high

Preparation

Gyokuro is a very high-quality tea and deserves to be prepared with care. We recommend steeping 6 g of gyokuro in 500 ml of water at 60 °C for 2 minutes. Several infusions are definitely possible.

For the ideal gyokuro experience, you can also prepare the tea in a kyusu, an original Japanese side-handle teapot. This gives you more control over the brewing and brings out the full flavor of the leaves. Use 4 g of tea leaves with 100 ml of water at 50 °C. The steeping times for each infusion:

• 1st infusion: 90 seconds
• 2nd infusion: 30 seconds
• 3rd infusion: 60 seconds
• each further infusion: 20 seconds longer

Tasting video

Learn more about our first-class gyokuro in the tasting video (in German).

Discover more

You can read all about this type of tea in our blog article What is gyokuro tea? (in German) and in the cultivation and tasting report on Hon Gyokuro Kusanagi (in German). Our Kabuse Sencha Superior is also shaded before the harvest.