What is "first flush" tea?

Let me start out by saying that all Mellow Monk tea is first-flush tea.

But to someone not familiar with the more arcane terms used in the tea business, "first flush" may not sound like a good thing. But it simply means "first harvest" or "spring harvest." That implies that there must be at least one other harvest in the year. In most cases, there are.

But Mellow Monk doesn't simply buy only a grower's "first flush" tea. We go beyond that: The growers we choose produce only first-flush tea. When I asked Mr. Nagata (currently our primary grower) about the subject, he answered that tea from a second or even third harvest in the late summer or early fall never tastes as good as the first (spring) harvest because (among other reasons) second-harvest tea bakes in the hot summer sun as it grows. In short, the best tea growers, making tea for the most discriminating tea drinkers, would not even produce anything but first-flush tea.

(A conscientious grower, even if he or she did produce late-harvest tea, would label it as such—in Japan, usually as bancha, the Japanese term for common tea. But many mass-market tea companies simply buy up whatever they can get their hands on at a low price and mix it all together.)

Some customers have contact us asking specifically for "first harvest" or "first flush" tea, and I always tell them, "That all we carry! You won't find any late-harvest tea here!"

—Mellow Monk

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