Kabuse Tea

Kabuse tea, or is a class of Japanese tea leaf. literally means to cover or place on top, as a hat on a head, therefore kabuse tea is a tea leaf harvested from a tea plant that, for some period of time ranging from 2–25 days, has had a porous material draped over the plant while the young leaves are being produced. Kabuse tea is almost exclusively a first flush tea. Though kabuse tea is usually processed into a green tea after picking, kabuse tea denotes a pre-picking process and the freshly picked leaf can be used to produce any kind of tea, from green tea to oolong tea to black tea, or other types.

==Background== Kabuse tea leaves are used to produce one of the three most expensive Japanese green teas (the others are gyokuro and matcha). These teas are made from leaves that are hand-plucked and grown in the shade. Shade grown leaves produce superior quality green tea - ooika is the Japanese term for the "covered aroma" of these teas, which are high in theanine and other amino acids that contribute to their distinctive flavor. Kabuse is shaded for a shorter time than gyokuro it is sometimes called a shade grown sencha. Studies have found considerable difference between the essential oils of kabuse-cha and normal sencha made from leaves grown unshaded in an open field. Kawakami and Yamanishi found that kabuse-cha contained large quantities of ionone series compounds.