It is always exciting right before the first harvest of the year.  Once you step into the tea field, you can smell the tea and surrounding environment shows the signs of readiness.  

Spring flush is tender yet dense.  The essence of green tea is packed into the tips of the tea plants.  These tender succulent tips are rolled into fine loose leaf tea.  For experienced eyes the shape of the tea tells a lot of story.

Flavor is light and green, yet it has depth in elegant softness.  

It has sweet nutty aroma of light roasting.  

It is almost the end of a year for tea.  Did you finish drinking all '07 tea?  

Today, I will talk a bit about "How to store tea".

There are a lot of teas that change its aroma and flavor over time.  Some improve.  I call this "aging" as opposed to "deterioration", or quality loss.  I will talk about aging some other time since it is much more profound topic than proper storage of tea, plus I haven't had a chance to store my tea in a cave.

How long does tea last?

 There is no one absolute answer for this.  There are many different types of tea and some last long time, others short.  And how can you tell when the expiration date of fineness in tea?  

There should be different ways of storing tea for different types of tea.  Since I focus mainly on green tea, I would just talk about green tea here.

 Storing Green Tea

So where do you store your tea?  Cabinet?  Freezer?  Wine celler?  ,

Let's first look at general recommendation for sencha (steamed green tea) storage since steamed green tea is more reactive and easy to see the change over time..

If you buy a fine quality tea, probably a package should at least say,

"In order to enjoy this green tea for the best flavor, drink this tea within one year from the production date.  Once you open the bag consume it as soon as possible.  Store the tea in an air tight container that does not allow light and oxygen through and in a refrigerator or other cool place."