The Quick Sip
Our Sakura is a homage to the annual spring Japanese cherry blossom viewing. For many, the lovely Sakura evokes the joy of spring's renewal. This tea is an inspired combination of Japanese Sencha, cherry, strawberry, raspberry and rhubarb, and embodies the fragrance and colour of spring's promise. A delight to the senses, this delicately scented tea is sure to please, whichever blossom it is you happen to view.

Tea Tales

Hanami is the Japanese custom of viewing and enjoying the beauty of the ornamental cherry blossoms. The Sakura is pure white, tinged with the palest pink near the stem, so that at the height of their bloom, the trees seem an ethereal white. Within a short week the flowers will scatter in a gentle rain of white petals, even before the leaves emerge. The Sakura in Japan has long been a symbol of transient beauty and found sympathy with the Samurai or Bushi. Life was viewed as all too brief but beautiful, much like the cherry blossom. The custom of Hanami was originally limited to the Imperial Court but soon spread to the Samurai class and eventually to society as a whole. In modern-day Japan, thousands await the weather bureau's sakurazensen, or blossom forecast, since the viewing window is so short lived. A tasty lunch, followed by tea or sake under the Sakura trees has for many come to be a very pleasant pastime, so much so the saying, to ‘prefer dumplings over flowers' points to the real priorities of some cherry blossom viewers!