Sencha
Sencha
Single-cultivar Yamakai sencha from one Shizuoka estate — deep-steamed, one lot, never to be repeated. Pineapple shortbread on the nose, savoury depth beneath.
From a mountain ravine in Shizuoka.
Yamakai — "mountain ravine" — is a cultivar developed in 1935 at the Shizuoka Agricultural Laboratory: a cross between Yabukita and a variety that was never identified. It was named in 1967 and never registered. Almost no one grows it. Fine, diamond-shaped leaves; a sharp, complex aroma; a character entirely its own.
This lot was grown by a single agricultural cooperative in Shimada, Shizuoka — one estate, one cultivar, one spring picking. We acquired the entire remaining lot from our source. When this run is gone, it will not return.
Steamed, not fired. The Japanese line in the sand.
The defining decision in Japanese green tea is steam, not fire. Chinese greens are pan-fired; Japanese greens are steamed. The steam stops oxidation faster, preserves the marine-vegetal character of the leaf, and gives Japanese sencha its unmistakable green colour and umami body.
This run is fukamushi — deep-steamed. The longer steam breaks the leaf down further, giving an opaque, deeply green cup with more body and almost no astringency. The leaf is rolled, dried, sorted, and sealed. What the steam sets, the sachet keeps.
A cup that opens with pineapple shortbread and ends somewhere stranger.
The liquor is opaque, muted forest green — the deepest green cup in the box. The aroma is not the standard sencha register at all: pineapple, shortbread, and a subtle marine freshness.
A tea for the drinker who thinks they know sencha. Few will ever taste this cultivar — fewer still, this lot.
Cool water. Brief steep. A second pour, and a third.
Sencha is the most temperature-sensitive tea in the box. Hot water cooks the leaf, releases the bitterness, and ruins the cup. Wait for the kettle to cool. The wait is the ritual.
Your only chance to taste it.
This is the rarest tea Saint Graal has ever offered. Yamakai is a cultivar with no registration, no marketing body, and almost no acreage — a 1935 cross that survived on character alone. Most tea drinkers, including serious ones, will go a lifetime without tasting it.
Most sencha sold in the West is a blend of fannings and dust, harvested late, oxidised lightly in transit, and stored in conditions that strip the green. The cup that arrives is yellow rather than green, grassy rather than umami, and bears little resemblance to the tea the Japanese drink at home.
This run comes from a single cooperative estate in Shimada, Shizuoka — and we acquired the entire remaining lot from our source. There is no reorder. When a Saint Graal run sells through, it is replaced by a different tea, never restocked. This is the only run of Yamakai there will be.