While green tea production methods vary, the focus is always to fix the green color. The slightly sweet vegetal flavors found in sencha are transformed in bancha to more grassy notes. Growing on the same bush, sencha, which means “new tea,” consists of the smaller, tenderer leaves that emerge first bancha is made from the larger, older leaves that grow after the sencha leaves have been plucked. There are two varieties of sun-grown teas: sencha and bancha. With slightly lower levels of amino acids and chlorophyll and higher levels of certain polyphenols, sun-grown teas are lighter in color, more vegetal and a little more astringent. Gyokuro, tencha and matcha are shade grown and often have a quality known to the Japanese as umami, for their mouth-filling richness. Growing tea in the shade builds up the levels of both chlorophyll and amino acids in the leaves, while lowering the polyphenols, giving the teas a darker, more vivid emerald hue and a smoother, more mellow and less astringent flavor than teas grown entirely in the sun. Uji is Japan’s oldest tea-growing region, and Uji tea farmers created the two principal sources of variation in Japanese teas: (1) sencha sun-grown teas and (2) gyokuro shade-grown teas.
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