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  • Tea variety
  • 新茶

Shincha

The year's first harvest, and the only one that is perishable.

Flavor profile

Grassspring greenery 80%
Umamiumami 75%
Sweetnesssweetness 60%
Bitternessmild bitterness 35%

The strengths are editorial judgments on a scale within the family, not measurements. They can be compared across the green tea varieties, not directly against another family.

Shincha means new tea and is the year's first harvest, packed and sold right away instead of going into cold storage like the rest of the production. It is not a variety of its own but sencha at a particular moment: the leaves have gathered nutrients all winter, and the cup turns out sweeter, fresher and less astringent than the sencha the same bush gives later in the year. Shincha is also the only Japanese tea that is perishable in the true sense.

Sensory analysis

Pyramid and character

Aroma

dry leaf and freshly brewed

  • spring greenery
  • freshly cut grass
  • steam

Cup

mid-sip

  • sweet umami
  • soft greenness

Finish

what lingers

  • clean
  • cooling
  • brief sweetness
UMAMISWEETNESSBITTERNESSROASTBODYFRESHNESS

Character 0-100 per axis, set relative to the other entries in the same family. An editorial judgment of a typical serving, not measurements.

Background

Facts

Processing
sencha from the year's first harvest, packed and sold right away without long cold storage
Harvest
ichibancha, from early April in the earliest areas to May further north; traditionally tied to hachijuhachiya, the eighty-eighth night after the start of spring
Kinship
all shincha is ichibancha, but not all ichibancha is sold as shincha; much of the first harvest is stored cold and blended into ordinary sencha year-round
Composition
rich in amino acids, which carry the sweetness and the umami; figures for catechin and caffeine content differ between sources

In the cup

Brewing

Temperature
70-80°C
Time
1-2 minutes
Note
the aroma is the whole point of shincha, so the tea should be drunk early in the year and stored cool and airtight; six months later it is just sencha

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