In the finishing step of creating green tea, leaf bits, stems and stalks are sorted from the unfinished ("aracha") tea leaves. By gathering together these leaf stems and stalks, tea producers create kukicha - 茎茶, literally "stem tea".
When the stems are larger, particularly when they come from larger summer or autumn harvested leaves and are roasted, they may look like twigs and are sometimes called “twig tea” in English.
Producers may often sell the stems and stalks together with smaller leaves, or even reblend them with sencha leaves to create their kukicha product.
KARIGANE – 雁音 – When made from gyokuro or high grade sencha, kukicha leaf stem tea is often given a more elegant name, karigane or “the sound of geese”. The motif of geese is, in traditional Japanese poetic aesthetic, a symbol of beauty; it was said that when migrating, geese would carry a twig or branch to rest on in the sea. Karigane is named after this image.
FLAVOR - In general, you can expect kukicha (and especially karigane) to have a slightly lighter and sweeter flavor than the equivalent tea leaf from which it was made.
