2026 Maki & Shin-ryoku

The 2026 crop of our Fukamushi Sencha Maki and Sencha Shin-ryoku are here. After tasting both of these, are pleased with the results.

When tasting the Maki, we noticed that it had a rounded mouthfeel. With it's coarse leaf material, we were expecting the tea to have a little more bite to it. This tea is actually grown in full sun in Makinohara, Shizuoka. Tea grown in full sun can be a bit bitter because the L-theanine in the tea starts to turn into catechins which have more of a bitter flavor. That being said, this tea has an excellent balance of bitterness and sweetness.

Related to this, the Shin-ryoku is also grown in Shizuoka. This tea is picked a little later than the Zuiko but is picked before the Fuka-midori. They are all first flush teas, but use different material from the first flush. In this case, the longer the leaves go without being picked, the more sunshine they are exposed to, the more catechins the leaves will produce. The amount of sun exposure the Shin-ryoku received seems to have given it, like the Maki, a balance bitterness and sweetness.

We hope you'll check out these teas, and we look forward to releasing more of our 2026 teas in the future.