12.07.08 Blackberry Flavored Green Tea

December 7th, 2008

Another longtime favorite at Zoomdweebie’s recently revamped and now better than EVER!

We looked long and hard to find a replacement base tea for our flavored green teas before deciding on the Chinese sencha. Most people associate sencha with Japan, where it is very popular indeed. Literally, sencha means, “broiled (or roasted) tea”, which refers to the process by which the oxidation of the tea leaves is stopped. If the leaves were allowed to fully oxidize, the result would be black tea instead of green tea–something like the difference between a fresh green leaf on the tree in your yard in the spring and the dried brown one on the ground in the fall. Just like tea, the leaves in your trees change color by a process called oxidation.

Most methods of halting the oxidation process in tea leaves involve the application of heat, usually either through steaming or pan-firing the leaves. Sencha uses the pan-firing method, hence the name “broiled (or roasted) tea”. Japanese sencha is unique in that it is actually steamed first for a short period, then rolled, shaped and dried, and finally pan-fired. This gives the Japanese sencha a more vegetal, nearly grassy character which is slightly more bitter than the Chinese sencha which is immediately pan-fired and is arguably a lighter, sweeter, more delicate tea.

It is the lighter, sweeter, more delicate nature of the Chinese sencha that convinced us that this should be the base tea for all of our flavored green teas. The sweetness of the tea enhances the flavors without overwhelming or being overwhelmed by them, so the resulting cup is a nice balance of terrific green tea with a prominent, but still secondary note of some other flavor (blackberry in this case).

We hope you enjoy our blackberry flavored green tea as much as we do, and we invite you to view our full selection of flavored green teas at zoomdweebies.com.

52teas.com