Today, the communiTEA is drinking...

Kukicha (茎茶, literally "stem tea") is a warm, rounded, and playful green tea from Japan — and unlike any other tea in the Adagio Japanese collection. Where Sencha, Gyokuro, and Genmai Cha are made from tea leaves, Kukicha is a blend of tea leaves and tea leaf stems. The stems are the part of the tea plant almost every other tea discards. In Kukicha, they are the defining ingredient.

The lightness of the stems translates directly into the cup: a sweet note of white sesame seed or chestnut that sits alongside the green tea character, giving Kukicha a flavour profile found nowhere else in Japanese tea. Tender quality to the texture, like soft white rice. Very balanced and, for a Japanese tea, very low in astringency — and naturally lower in caffeine than leaf-only teas, because the stems contain significantly less caffeine than the leaves.