Sencha Sunrise: How a Gift From Japan Became Our Take on Earl Grey

Our blends come from all kinds of places. One began with a heist. This one began with a friendship. A longtime customer, someone who had been coming by the shop for years, stopped in after a trip to Japan and set a small bag of Tea on the counter. Inside was a Sencha, the steamed Japanese Green Tea, scented with yuzu, and the label described it as a Japanese Earl Grey. They had found it while traveling and wanted us to try it.

There was no bergamot in it at all, and yet the name still made sense. That bag is where Sencha Sunrise began: our own blend of sweet Sencha from Saga prefecture and bright orange peel. It carries no bergamot either, and the reason it still belongs to the Earl Grey family is the whole story.

Yuzu, Bergamot, and What Grows Nearby

The citrus in that bag was yuzu (Citrus junos), a small, knobbly fruit that Japanese cooks prize above all for its peel. The peel is where the aroma lives, bright and floral with a sharp edge, which is why it gets grated over fish or sliced thin to perfume a bowl of soup. Yuzu likely came to Japan from China more than a thousand years ago, and today it grows across much of the country, especially in Kōchi prefecture.

What struck us was how differently that pairing came together compared with a classic Earl Grey. Bergamot grows mostly along the Ionian coast of Calabria, at the southern tip of Italy, while the Black Tea it scents is grown in China, India, or Sri Lanka. Traditionally, the two have met only in a blending room, thousands of miles from where either one grew. 

The bag on our counter was the opposite: a Japanese citrus scenting a Japanese Tea, both grown in the same country. Someone had taken the idea of Earl Grey and rebuilt it from what grew close to home.

That idea is what people really recognize in an Earl Grey: the moment a fragrant citrus lifts off a cup of Tea before the first sip. It’s why we make more than one, including Clockwork Orange, which piles orange on top of its bergamot. Every one of ours still keeps the bergamot, though. This Tea from Japan let it go entirely, and it got us thinking about what else the idea could hold. 

Why Orange, and Why Sencha From Saga?

When we set out to make my own version, we kept the Japanese base and changed the citrus. Yuzu is tart and sharp, wonderful in small amounts, but we wanted something sweeter to sit against the grassy edge of a Sencha. Orange peel does that. It brings a rounder, warmer citrus that softens the leaf instead of competing with it.

The Sencha comes from Saga prefecture, on the island of Kyushu in Japan’s southwest, and it turns out to be a fitting home for a blend like this. Saga’s own Tea story began with inspiration from abroad. Tradition holds that the monk Eisai planted Tea seeds from China in the mountains along Saga’s northern border in 1191, and for centuries the region made its Tea by pan-firing, a method first shared by Chinese potters who settled there, before steaming took over after the Second World War. Over all that time, Saga welcomed what it learned and shaped it, with care, into a Tea tradition entirely its own.

Our Sencha is steamed, the way most Japanese Green Tea is, and rolled into fine needles. The steaming gives it its sweet, grassy character, and the tight needle shape is why it gives up its flavor quickly once it meets water. If you’re curious how those two steps shape a leaf, I’ve gone through both in Finding Your Green Tea.

What Does Sencha Sunrise Taste Like?

The first thing we notice when the leaves hit the water is the orange, bright and lifting off the cup almost before the steep has started. The Sencha follows on the first sip, and the two settle into each other so the cup reads as one Tea rather than a Tea with something added. 

Aroma: Bright orange peel over fresh, grassy Sencha
Body: Light and clean
Finish: Sweet citrus

The best way to understand it is to taste it beside its cousin. Clockwork Orange puts orange peel on a Black Tea base with bergamot, and the cup is fuller, deeper, and more structured. Sencha Sunrise sets orange peel on a steamed Green Tea, and everything turns lighter and brighter. It’s close to the same citrus on two different leaves, and drinking them side by side shows just how much the base shapes a cup. 

How to Brew Sencha Sunrise

Brew it like the Green Tea it is, not like the Earl Grey it’s related to.

Leaf: About 1 teaspoon per 8 ounces of water
Water: 150 to 170°F (about 65 to 77°C)
Steep: Start at 1 to 2 minutes

That’s a good deal gentler than a Black Tea Earl Grey, which takes water near boiling and three or four minutes in the pot. Give Sencha that treatment and it pulls out a bitterness that buries both the orange and the natural sweetness of the leaf. Our advice is to start at the cooler, shorter end, taste, and adjust from there. You can always give the next cup a little more time, but you can’t take bitterness back out.

If a cup has already gotten away from you, How to Brew Green Tea Without Making It Bitter walks through the usual causes.

A Blend That Walked In the Door

Our blends have come from a stolen clock and, now, a bag of Tea carried home from the other side of the Pacific. We’ve stopped being surprised by where the next one will come from. Some of the best ideas arrive across the counter, from someone who tasted something wonderful somewhere else and thought of us.

That’s the part of this work we value most. Over years of cups and conversations, the line between customer and friend gets blurry, and the Tea starts traveling in both directions. That small bag from Japan did exactly what a good gift does: it changed how we thought about something we already knew well. Sencha Sunrise is our answer to it and every batch we blend is a small thank-you to the friend who brought it in. 

You’ll find Sencha Sunrise in our shop, alongside the rest of our Green Teas.