#wakoucha

(image source: From China to Japan Photo: PIXTA/ chanchao)

Everything You Need to Know About Japanese Black Tea

While Japan is best known now for its delicate green teas, there is also a long history of black tea production. And in fact, in its heyday, Japanese black tea outsold green tea on the export market.

Nowadays, Wakoucha (Japanese black tea), has been enjoying a domestic revival spurred on by strong consumer interest in coffee and imported blacks. It’s about time too! Whether you’re a Japanese green tea lover or prefer a cup of black in the morning, wakoucha has something for everyone, with low astringency and cultivars with flavor profiles ranging from full-bodied to fruity and mellow.

Tonight’s tea is a Wazuka wa-koucha! Please send some good vibes and hope that I’ll be able to sleep tonight 😅

After hundreds of years of green tea cultivation in Japan, tea farmers started to set their sights on other tea products only within the last century and a half or so. Since black teas are a relatively new phenomenon in Japan, flavors and processing techniques are still developing even today. The matcha market is saturated with some really old and famous tea families and blends and award-winning cultivars and such, but in the emerging Japan-produced oolong and black tea markets, specimens such as my Wazuka koucha are more accessible. While I have a 20g tin of matcha in my collection from a 300-year-old Kyoto tea company with a price tag of a whopping $56 (it was a gift, thank goodness), 30g of koucha came out to a more savory $9.