Masterclass Ikedoki – Wakōcha from Nagasaki

This workshop is all about celebrating a very niche category of tea: wakōcha.

Did you know Japan produces about 1% of the world’s tea? And Nagasaki, one of the smaller tea regions in Japan, produces about 1% of Japan’s tea.

But Nagasaki’s 1% of Japan’s 1% is almost all green tea (tamaryokucha to be precise: Nagasaki’s speciality).

If we zoom into an even smaller percentage: black tea production in Nagasaki is so negligible that a 2023 industry overview of black tea production in Japan lists a blank space next to Nagasaki. A call with the Nagasaki Tea Research centre to ask if there were any numbers about Nagasaki black tea production resulted in a confession that they were not aware of any official figures and had no idea.

Despite all these small percentages and blank spaces, there is a growing interest in wakōcha, some news articles even speaking about a Black Tea Renaissance in Japan. The Jikōcha Society (jikōcha = local black tea) has been holding black tea summits across Japan almost yearly since 2002, and in 2023 they proudly announced that there was at least one black tea producer in every single prefecture in Japan. Even in Nagasaki there are 19 farmers producing wakōcha.

This workshop, hosted by Marjolein Raijmakers from Nagasaki Ikedoki Tea, will focus on wakōcha from Nagasaki.

Ikedoki Tea is a young project aiming to support tea farmers and producers within the Nagasaki Prefecture to help promote their teas, tell farmers’ stories and make the teas available to an international audience. Marjolein will share some general Japanese black tea history, talk about Nagasaki region and will showcase a rich diversity of wakōcha from different farmers in Nagasaki. Ranging from Sonogi tea region all the way to Tsushima Island (that lies between Japan and South Korea), we will taste teas that showcase an emerging ‘standard’ wakōcha flavour profile, as well as some exciting experiments like roasted black tea.

De training wordt in het Nederlands gegeven en er is een maximum van 12 deelnemers. Zit de ochtendsessie vol, dan overwegen we om dezelfde training ook nog in de middag te geven. Dus kan je ’s ochtends niet maar wel ’s middags, neem dan contact op voor een voorinschrijving.