Journal

Cooling Greens: Everyday Shincha

Cooling Greens: Everyday Shincha

The next two months will be peak Summer heat for most of us. There are no better conditions for enjoying refreshing green teas ...we suspect we wi...

Three new Shincha (Fresh Harvest Sencha)

Spring and early summer is a thrilling time for Cultivate, as shipments of fresh harvests continue to arrive from China and Japan. Look at what we...

River, Cliff, and Volcano Tea: Sencha from Maruhachi Tea

Our seasonal exploration of Sencha continues with new arrivals from the catalogue of Maruhachi Tea Factory. Our first sencha is from the Higash...

Making Iced Matcha Latte, at home

The heat of the sun is reaching us, and we would like to share one of our favourite ways to cool down with you: Whisked Yamabuki matcha poured over...

Unexpected Teas from Yakushima, Japan

Yakushima 屋久岛 is a small island off of Kagoshima, in southern Japan. It is a World Heritage Site, and well known as home to an ancient forest that...

Japanese Roasted Tea and Maruhachi Tea Factory

“Hojicha” refers to any type of Japanese tea that has been roasted. Most people don’t know that sencha and bancha are the raw materials for making ...

Rare Tea Tasting: Pearl Orchid Anji Baicha 珠兰安吉白

Through the trust of my tea mentor in Beijing I was able to acquire the contact for a woman who lives in Anji, and who is known to make the fines...

The Elusive and Endangered Yellow Tea

Yellow teas have been prized as Tribute Teas, and favored by emperors, for over a thousand years. Crafting yellow tea requires an intense amount of...

Mengding Mountain 蒙顶山

A recently published "Forbidden City Tribute Tea Collection" catalogs 50 kinds of Tribute Teas from 11 provinces in the Qing Dynasty. For the firs...

Tribute Teas 贡茶

Tribute Teas (贡茶 gong cha) represent the highest level of teas historically: they are dedicated to royal families and their ancestral lineage, and ...