Pine Needle Wakoucha from Kyoto Obubu Tea Farms

Pine Needle Wakoucha

Tea type
Black Tea
Ingredients
Black Tea
Flavors
Bread, Brown Sugar, Dates, Dried Fruit, Fig, Grain, Hay, Honey, Mineral, Molasses, Musty, Oats, Smooth, Straw, Sweet, Butternut Squash, Pumpkin, Malty
Sold in
Loose Leaf
Caffeine
Not available
Certification
Not available
Edit tea info Last updated by Cameron B.
Average preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 2 min, 0 sec 4 g 12 oz / 363 ml

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5 Tasting Notes View all

  • “This one is from Cameron B – thanks yet again! The leaves here look like very long sencha that has been roasted. (Look how much I know about Japanese black teas. har har.) The scent of the leaf...” Read full tasting note
    74
  • “Sipdown! (17 | 147) I figured this would be interesting to try as a milk tea! I only had one packet left after sending out a couple on swaps, so I thought it would be a nice way to finish it...” Read full tasting note

From Kyoto Obubu Tea Farms

This Wakoucha is a special needle-like Japanese black tea. Medium in body it has a lightly savory tase with some subtle astringency and underlying notes of molasses. The liquor has a beautiful copper colour with a lingering aroma of a freshly cut watermelon. In the production it has been rolled just like Sencha, that results in unique needled-shaped tea leaves. Pine Needle Wakoucha is a truly rare tea.

Taste: Lightly astringent
Body: Light
Texture: Sharp
Length: Medium
Harvest: July
Tea Cultivar: Yabukita
Origin: Wazuka
Cultivation: Unshaded
Processing: Withered Rolled, Dried

About Kyoto Obubu Tea Farms View company

It started with a single cup of tea. As the legend goes, our president Akihiro Kita, or Akky-san, visited Wazuka, Kyoto one fateful day. At the time, Akky-san was still a college student in search for life's calling. After trying the region's famous Ujicha (literally meaning tea from the Uji district), he immediately fell in love and his passion for green tea was born. He had finally found what he was looking for in that one simple cup of tea. After fifteen years of learning to master the art of growing tea from tea farmers in Wazuka, Kyoto Obubu Tea Farms was born and as they say, the rest is history. So what's an Obubu? Obubu is the Kyoto slang for tea. Here in the international department we call ourselves Obubu Tea. That's "Tea Tea" for the bilinguals. We love tea so much, we just had to have it twice in our name. Now Obubu means more than just tea to us. It means, family, friends, passion and the place we call home. More than just tea. Though the roots of Obubu stem from tea, it has become more than that over the years. Obubu is an agricultural social venture, operating with three (1) bring quality Japanese tea to the world (2) contribute to the local and global community through tea (3) revitalize interest in tea and agriculture through education.

5 Tasting Notes

74
4471 tasting notes

This one is from Cameron B – thanks yet again! The leaves here look like very long sencha that has been roasted. (Look how much I know about Japanese black teas. har har.) The scent of the leaf is roasty, and the flavor is roasty, but also very light, like a Big Red Robe oolong (have not had one of those in ages). The lightness means I am bound not to be a huge fan of this one… I am not really one for light flavored black teas, or for roasted flavors. And I also agree with Cameron’s flavor notes of oats and straw. When it cools, it takes on a tangy fruit flavor, maybe tamarind. (The description says watermelon FWIW, but I don’t agree.) And when even cooler, maybe mint? Or maybe I was just outside and it just seems like a mint effect… The second steep gets a LITTLE darker/deeper, and also not astringent, which is a good thing.
Steep #1 // 1 1/2 teaspoons // 20 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep
Steep #2 // just boiled // 4 minute steep
1 comments
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Skysamurai
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I love seeing more people try this tea. Many teas that come from Obubu, like this one, are fairly recent experiments that turned out great. I’m not sure if I’m remembering correctly, but I believe George made this one.

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4622 tasting notes

Sipdown! (17 | 147)

I figured this would be interesting to try as a milk tea! I only had one packet left after sending out a couple on swaps, so I thought it would be a nice way to finish it off.

The beginning of the sip is actually dead-on for kabocha! Which I was not expecting at all, given that’s not a note I found in the tea by itself. But it’s very squashy, yet sweet and creamy, almost like a creamy kabocha soup. The middle and end transitions more to sweet honeyed brioche, which makes more sense as I often find wakocha bready.

Anyway, surprising and yummy! Next time I’d try this one with honey syrup instead of regular.

Flavors: Bread, Butternut Squash, Honey, Pumpkin

Preparation
Iced 3 min, 0 sec 5 g 12 OZ / 354 ML
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