Tea Hong to resume online sales in November 😅 (Sorry!) & what our Japanese collection will look like

A letter to all of our users

As of this very moment, we have not heard from the shipping company yet whether they are releasing our cargo from their abruptly imposed “quarantine”.

Yes, you read it right, the shipping company, not the customs. This is just one of the many unusual things in Japan that we have been dealing with. The weird and blockade like bureaucracies in certain commercial entities are a lot more nightmarish than the government.

We have been negotiating with them for the past few weeks, often many days in a row, for retrieving our goods, answering new questions that they suddenly came up with every other day, busily preparing piles of documents they demanded.

One of the excitements when the shop resumes

It looks like we can get our stocks and supplies in November. I promise you we shall resume as soon as possible after that. Thank you for your kind understanding and continual support.

Besides wasting our time in dealing with the finicky bureaucracies from such suppliers, however, we are also busy with meaningful activities too, such as getting ready the Japanese collection to launch when we can resume online sales, in answer to the majority of what you chose in my earlier newsletter asking which line of new products you prefer to be available first.

We are now in Japan after all. Our producer in Mie is an hour’s drive from us and Kyoto is a 35min bullet train ride away. We have been working with them to fine tune our offers.

I have not yet done the product shots of the tealeaves yet, but took a snapshot of the range for our export clients. Some of the selections in there are for export wholesale only, but I think it’s a good overview of Japanese tea varieties. Other than Bancha and Wakocha, most major types are there.

Varieties in our Japanese collection

It was a cloudy day outside in my balcony, and done in a rush, so please bear with the poor quality of the image. The quality of the tea is much, much better.

Just want to let you see what will be available online:

Gyokuro (4): For this most revered of all Japanese tea, there will be a competition grade from Uji, hand-picked and small batch processed. One that has convinced us that it is worth the prize. There will also be wallet friendlier selections as well as an organic one.

Houjicha (9), (10): We had a detailed tasting session with the reputable tea master Kikuoka in a number of teas and one variety in focus was this far-infrared processed houjicha (10). We compared it with another one processed in the same method and some in the traditional style. Later back in Nagoya, we also taste compare it against a few other freshly obtained samples. It renders a taste profile supremely different. It has changed my perception of this tea altogether and have decided to include it in my repertoire.

Kabusecha (2): This is shaded-grown tea that is kind of like the higher price gyokuro and very often sold in the name of it for better profit margin. If you prefer a softer and rounder type of Japanese green as a daily drink, this is a wallet friendlier version than gyokuro and more error forgiving than sencha.

Karigane (7): This type of Japanese green tea that includes a large proportion of petioles is also known as kukicha, shiraore, or in some instances, even as the more broad-brushing name bohcha. Although we are wholesaling a few different grades, we select only the best we have sampled, one that is made along with the processing for a high quality gyokuro. Talk about wallet-friendliness, and this is one that is an ultimate choice for an uniquely enjoyable daily green tea.

Matcha (1), (8): While most people are familiar with matcha produced for the purpose of making icecream, or latte, etc there is a different category of matcha designated for purely for drinking. Top quality selections of this category is traditional tea enjoyment at its apex. As a tea purist myself, naturally I have targeted my selection in this direction (8), offering you a few choices of different parameters. If you are keen to get a good matcha for culinary use (1), however, I have got you covered. We have screened the market for the best organic one to offer.

Sencha (5): This quintessential Japanese leaf green tea does not have the easy appeal of the rounded softness of gyokuro, or the hype of matcha as both an oldest form of tea and a popular ingredient in the contemporary mass market beverage culture. Yet a good sencha has the complexity and volume of what any good green tea should offer. Those with a good balanced layer of astringency and bitterness give the body a depth that veteran tea drinkers like myself seek for a satisfying sip.

We eagerly look forward to start offering these collection which we have put so much efforts in assembling. I hope you will enjoy them once the shop resumes. Stay tuned-in.

Cheers,
Leo