Karigane (雁ヶ音)

Walk into an old tea shop in Kyoto and you’ll find gyokuro, the shaded tea Japan treats as one of its finest, priced and packed with care. Look a little further along the shelf and there’s often a quieter bag nearby. It’s full of pale green stems instead of dark needles, and its label reads karigane. Karigane (雁ヶ音) is a Japanese stem tea made from stems and leaf stalks separated during the finishing of gyokuro or other high-grade green teas. It brews a light, sweet, gently savory cup with very little bitterness. In Kyoto it’s a familiar everyday tea, and the name itself carries a small poem about wild geese. The short answer Karigane is a type of stem tea (kukicha), usually made from the stems of high-grade tea: most often gyokuro, sometimes kabusecha or fine sencha. The name is used mainly around Kyoto. Compared with everyday stem tea, it usually tastes sweeter and rounder, and it rewards a slightly cooler, gentler brew. TOCWhat Is Karigane? It belongs to the stem-tea family. During the finishing of crude tea, machines separate the leaf from the stems and leaf stalks, and that stem-rich portion is sold as its own tea. What makes a stem tea “karigane” rather than plain kukicha is m...