Harvest time: May, 2025

Origin: Okabe, Shizuoka, Japan

Cultivar: Gokou

Tea garden: Hattori Farm

Garden height: 300m

Gyokuro is the highest class of Japanese tea and is highly valued. This tea is additionally gaining in value, because (unlike the usual machine picking in Japan) the leaves are harvested by hand, which achieves the top quality of the tea of carefully selected leaves.

The leaves are deliberately left to grow in the shade for twenty days, and then, unlike the usual machine picking, they are hand-picked to pick the highest quality leaves. Immediately after picking, the leaves are steamed, dried and carefully rolled out, and the end product of Gyokuro tea is distinctly reminiscent of pine needles. It is harvested in early spring. Green tea connoisseurs especially appreciate it for its delicate but rich umami taste and the famous “aftertaste”.

Due to the specific way of aging in the shade, gyokuro contains more theine than other teas and is very rich in amino acids.

Gokou is a cultivar about which there is not much information available, because although it is not a rare variety, it is not registered or entered in the official list of cultivars.

This Japanese green tea cultivar is highly regarded for its unique flavor profile. This variety is said to have been developed in the early 1900s by a tea grower named Nagatani Soen in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan.

Gokou comes from the seeds of a native plant in Uji and was selected as the best in 1953 by the Tea Industry Research Institute of Kyoto Prefecture.

Gokou is intended for the production of gyokuro and matcha, because by growing in the shade, it provides a superior raw material for these high-quality teas, and the soil and climate in Kyoto are particularly suitable for it. Gokou tea leaves have a dark green color and a strong umami flavor. After processing, the tea has a very pronounced aroma, rich, full taste and aroma, with notes of umami and sweetness, and is particularly suitable for making gyokuro and other high-quality Japanese green teas.

The variety is cold-resistant and has medium resistance to anthracnose (damage caused to plants by a group of fungal diseases). The harvesting period is three days after the most widespread variety, Yabukita, is harvested, and their yield is about the same.

This cutivar is very rarely used for sencha, because regardless of the top cultivar, it often does not give the best results when trying to produce top quality sencha.

Today, Gokou is still a relatively rare variety of tea, and only a small number of farms grow it. However, it is still in high demand among tea lovers who appreciate its unique taste and history.

Preparation

• 7 g of tea
• 100-120 ml of water
• temp. 50-60°C
• Spillovers 3: 2-3 min, 40 sec, 1-2 min