Monday, September 6, 2010

Making your own blend tea 1


We visited Ginkakuji temple on the Kyoto trip, which is the World Cultural Heritage Site. It is rustic but very sophisticated. I find Japanese beauty “wabi sabi” there. They have a 4.5 tatami mat room, and it is said to be the begging of So-an style tea room. You can’t get in the buildings at Ginkakuji, I wish you could see the inside. It is one of my best three favorite temples.

After visiting Ginkakuji, we went to a teashop, Fukujuen. I have introduced the Uji branch of Fukujuen before. This is the main shop. We visited there to make our own blend tea. As I said before, most of Japanese tea sold at tea stores are blended some breeds of tea to make them delicious and keep certain quality. Here, you can try making your own tea by blending your favorite breeds with your proportion.


What you do here is …
1. Get counseling
A tea instructor ask you your drinking custom and preference.
2. Tasting single breed teas and find your favorite tea
The instructor recommends you some breeds from their tea selection.
You taste them and decide your favorite breads.
3. Get the teas blended, and try and decide the proportion
The instructor blends your teas, and you taste the blended tea.
You decide the blending ratio of your teas.


The instructor does all the brewing and blending. So, what you need to do is to taste the tea and tell the instructor how you like the tea. And the instructor gives you advices.

They have many single breed teas of sencha, kabusecha, gyokuro, and tencha. You can even make a special tea by blending different types of tea, something like sencha and tencha blend tea, which you can not usually find at tea stores. It was so much fun. We really enjoyed making own tea. I’ll talk about it a little more on the next post. See you soon.

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