Aracha

↑About Aracha

Aracha(荒茶), sometimes called "unsorted tea" or occasionally unflatteringly referred to as "unrefined" or "crude tea", is a Japanese style of green tea produced from unsorted parts of the harvested tea plant. Normally, in the production of most Japanese green tea, the leaf stem, hairs, major leaf veins, and other coarser parts of the leaf are removed in a sorting process; in aracha these are kept mixed together and all parts are used.

Aracha is usually finished in a production process similar to sencha, and these teas can be considered to be both aracha and sencha.

The quality of aracha can vary widely, in large part due to variations in handling and processing technique during harvesting. In general, batches containing larger, less broken pieces of leaf are considered higher quality, and they tend to store better and produce teas that are less bitter.

The different components of the tea leaf in aracha can contribute different aromatic and flavor qualities that can lead to a more complex cup than sorted teas. The stems are often lower in bitterness and impart more body to a cup, and, when combined with the other components of the leaf, can produce a more balanced cup.

Whether aracha is better or worse than sorted teas is often a matter of personal taste. Aracha often performs poorly at the stricter traditional Japanese measures of evaluating teas, because of the heterogeneous color of the leaf, but it can often outperform other teas when judged by qualities of the brewed cup alone.

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