JAPANESE HEI CHA: tea expert explains rare post-fermented tea.

Tasting and learning about rare Japanese Hei Cha with tea expert Noli. Post-fermented tea (a.k.a. dark tea) from the Land of the Rising Sun are extremely rare, discover them with us!.

Today, Gabriele sits down with Japanese tea expert Noli, for an introduction to a new kind of tea: while many are familiar with the dominant abundance of green tea in Japan—indeed, teas like Sencha and Matcha have become worldwide exports—there are also several less known varieties of tea produced in Japan, including fermented tea. Kurocha and Goishicha are roughly equivalent to the Chinese Hei Cha, but with processes and flavours all their own.
Unlike the Chinese Hei Cha which are wet-piled and left exposed to the air to ferment, some Japanese Kurocha are boiled or steamed and then fermented submerged in the leftover liquid to anaerobically ferment, and Goishicha gets both treatments.

Teas in video:
• Botebotecha, from Shimane Prefecture, an aerobically fermented bancha
• Batabatacha, made from Kurocha, an aerobically fermented bancha
• Ishizuchi Kurocha, from Ehime Prefecture, anaerobically fermented
• Awabancha, from Tokushima Prefecture, an anaerobically fermented bancha
• (Tasted in video) Goishicha, from Kochi Prefecture, first aerobically, then anaerobically fermented

Terminology:
'Hei cha' literally translates to 'black tea'. Whereas most western languages refer to dark, fully-oxidized tea leaves as 'black tea' (or the equivalent), Chinese considers these 'hong cha', or 'red tea', for the colour of the tea liquor, and 'hei cha' represents a completely separate category. Consequently, there are different strategies used to describe this category in languages which already have the term 'black tea'—for example, in English, it is variously referred to as: 'dark tea', 'post-fermented tea', or sometimes simply the Pinyin 'hei cha'.

Additionally, while some refer to the process of oxidising teas as 'fermentation', Goishicha, Kurocha, and Hei Cha are indeed actually fermented, i.e. transformed by microbial action. These are also separate phenomena to something like Kombucha, where processed (dried) tea is prepared, and then the resulting liquid (tea liquor) is fermented, sometimes with added sources of sugar. Hence the appellation 'post-fermented' for types like Hei Cha, in order to make clear the distinction.

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