Talking Tea: The Sencha Episode

This week on Talking Tea we’re exploring the intricacies
of sencha, the most ubiquitous of Japanese green teas. Sencha?
Intricate? Many tea drinkers don’t think of those two words in the
same context, but we sit down with Zach Mangan of Kettl, a Japanese
tea seller based in Fukuoka, Japan and Brooklyn, New York, to
sample some senchas and to look at how multifaceted this tea can
be.

Kettl has developed a reputation for being a purveyor of
tea to some of the most acclaimed restaurants in New York City, and
Zach talks with us about his own tea journey and his inspiration
for launching Kettl. We chat about how sencha is grown and
processed, how differing production techniques result in variations
in taste, aroma and complexity, and how Japanese tea producers mix
tradition with modern technology to create their teas. As we sample
and compare a blended sencha from the Uji region and an unblended
single-cultivar sencha from Nagasaki, Zach talks with us about why
sencha is often (but not always) a blend, and about how differences
in steaming result in the quite notable variations in appearance,
texture and flavor of asamushi, chumushi and fukamushi
sencha.

More information about Kettl, including its online
store, info about its retail shop, classes and events, and where
you can find Kettl teas in New York City, is available at Kettl’s
website, kettl.co.

For more information on Talking Tea and updates on new
episodes, visit our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/talkingtea.

To inquire about being a guest or having your
organization featured, please email us at talkingteapodcasts@gmail.com.

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Talking Tea is produced and hosted by Ken Cohen.
You can follow Ken on Twitter @Kensvoiceken. 

This podcast features music from “Japanese Flowers”
(https://soundcloud.com/mpgiii/japanese-flowers) by mpgiiiBEATS
(https://soundcloud.com/mpgiii) available under a Creative Commons
Attribution 3.0 Unported license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). Adapted from
original.

Image of Kettl’s Asanoyume sencha courtesy of
Kettl.