At the beginning of the New Year, and to link with my earlier post, I’d like to highlight Japanese teas. In Japan tea consuming is more than just an everyday thing, it is a life style and a spiritual ideal known as ‘’Cha Do’’ (The Way of Tea). Through their challenging and sophisticated culture, they made a ceremony ritual that considers tea as a unique product and its consumption an Art in itself.
Brief historic of Japanese tea industry:
For long time the Japanese tea industry was focusing on exportation and the international demand. Japan has export black tea until the 70s. Since then, the tea market has changed, and today most of Japanese rare black tea production remains for national consumption and less than 1% of the total production is to exportation. Japan is now 7th world wide green tea producer, and its industry is still growing. A large part of its success is due to many tea base by-products such as tooth paste, pharmaceutical products, pasta, ice tea, polyphenol extract and more…
It is hard to find English information on Japan economical data. The following statistics are from 2007 and are from Tea Board of Japan.
Total area cultivated: 48,000 hectares
Total annual production: 92,000 ton (green tea only)
Annual exportation: 1,600 ton
Main purchasing country: United States
ZenTboutique offers high-grade Japanese green teas, hand-crafted in small or micro batches from small family tea Estates. You can shop our Japanese teas here
If you leave in Calgary area, I’d like to invite you to join us at Café Blanca for a Japanese Tea and Food night on January 19th, 2015. The event is organized by Calgary Tea Talk and Share Club and the profits from the event will be donated to The Mustard Seeds Charity of Calgary. If you are not part of MeetUp, you can buy tickets on ZenTboutique’s website.
A Tea Sommelier's Journey 