Beyond Matcha: Japan’s Black and Oolong Tea Revival

Japanese tea’s matcha boom has made one category famous. It may also be hiding the more interesting story: across Japan, growers are making black and oolong teas with flavors and methods that challenge what many drinkers expect from Japanese tea.

I got a first taste at Chaho Furyu in Fukuoka. Proprietor Nobuhiko Ikematsu served chilled tea, then set to work on sencha. He held a broad, flat teapot in one hand and used tongs to touch a jagged piece of ice to the needle-thin leaves, turning the pot to draw out the flavor evenly. It looked less like ordinary tea service than a chef basting a steak. He poured me a small cup of golden tea and, using a translation app and printed notes, explained that four infusions would each use a different method.

The first cup smelled of jasmine and moved from bright to crisp to bittersweet, with an herbal edge. For the second, Ikematsu started with boiling water, then cooled the leaves with ice. The aroma grew more pronounced; the balance changed. The fourth cup used hot water in a more familiar way. By then, sencha had become less a single flavor than a sequence of them. I left wondering how much of what I thought I knew about Japanese tea I’d have to relearn.

I was in Fukuoka, the prefectural capital, in 2025 to report on matcha. At the time, cafés around the world were putting it in everything from lattes to croissants. Matcha deserves its popularity: its flavor is vivid, it works well in drinks and sweets, and it photographs beautifully. But if you’re newly won over by matcha, don’t mistake it for the whole story. New styles and progress in organic farming make this a particularly lively moment for Japanese tea beyond the green powder.

Japan’s black tea revival

Japan is best known for green teas such as matcha and sencha, but it has also made black tea for generations. Of the 15 Camellia sinensis cultivars registered nationally in 1953, five were bred specifically for black tea using plant genetics from India and Sri Lanka. Those early teas were dark, tannic commodities intended to compete in Europe. Japanese consumers generally chose imported black tea instead.

That history helps explain why the current revival matters. Known as wakocha, today’s Japanese black teas are not simply better versions of old export grades. They have their own styles, often with gentle notes of rose, sweet potato, or cinnamon. In the mountains of Yame, less than an hour from Fukuoka City, farmer Masashi Harashima is helping define what they can be.

Harashima is a third-generation grower in a region celebrated for prizewinning green tea and a varied tea industry. His 15 small plots sit around 2,000 feet above sea level in Yabe village. The cooler mountain climate lets him farm organically without pesticides. About a decade ago, he began exploring black teas influenced by Chinese and Taiwanese methods, studying their labor-intensive production and building machinery he couldn’t source commercially.

Making black tea means first withering fresh leaves on screens in long troughs until they lose moisture and become pliable. Harashima then rolls them, carefully tracking machine time and pressure, before spreading the bruised leaves to oxidize and develop their fruity depth. The work demands both sensory judgment and meticulous records. Season, weather, cultivar, and the quality of each pluck all change what the leaves need. Small batches give Harashima room to adjust each stage to the tea in front of him, but they also mean a lot of labor for a limited yield.

The payoff is striking. Harashima’s wakocha can hold its own beside top black teas from better-known regions. A batch made from the benifuuki cultivar began with a roasted aroma, then opened into rose Turkish delight and black cherry. A later infusion brought out wintergreen, a note I’ve also found in some of my favorite Darjeelings. Under those changing flavors was a calm, natural character. Harashima favors plant-based fertilizers over the nitrogen-heavy fish fertilizers many Japanese farmers use to boost umami; he believes that choice lets each cultivar’s character come through more clearly.

Under the Chiyonoen name, Harashima sells a dozen wakocha varieties, including single-cultivar teas and blends. His early spring batches are lightly oxidized and recall expensive Darjeeling first flush teas. As summer advances, he makes more heavily oxidized teas, drawing on the tannins and catechins that develop in warmer weather. Three years ago he added oolong. Those teas carry floral scents, including geranium and jasmine, and leave a nectar-like impression on the lips.

There’s pleasure in watching a loose-leaf tea change across several infusions. Matcha, like espresso, is consumed in a single moment; a good whole-leaf tea can stay with you through an afternoon. People often say tea helps them slow down, and that effect deepens when the leaves can take five steeps, each with its own character.

A small market with room to grow

Wakocha and oolong remain niche products in Japan. Domestic drinkers have shown interest, though not yet at scale. Still, experimentation has a practical case behind it. Japan’s population is shrinking and aging, and tea farmers are aging too. More growers are retiring than entering the trade, so the area devoted to tea has fallen year after year. Matcha exports have surged, but 90 percent of Japanese tea is still consumed at home. New styles could give buyers reasons to explore, while helping small producers in less famous regions stand out through distinctive flavors.

“When a Japanese black tea is well-made there really is nothing like it in the world as far as I know.”—Emily Morrison

That’s the view of Emily Morrison, founder of The Steeping Room, an Austin-based online shop that sources specialty tea from more than 10 countries. Morrison says she “actively and somewhat aggressively pursues wakocha” to show American customers a different kind of black tea. Wakocha tends toward harmony, a light body, and a mellow taste with little bitterness or astringency. Mellow doesn’t mean dull: Morrison is especially keen on teas from Hiroki Matsumoto, a 44-year-old—young by tea-farmer standards—who makes Japan’s first smoked black tea using local woods such as cherry and cedar.

Morrison has seen American interest in Japanese loose-leaf tea rise over the past few years, likely helped along by matcha. She sees sourcing emerging categories as a way to support the broader industry. “It’s hard out there for small farmers,” she says. “Even though matcha is booming, Japanese tea farmers have been struggling with little incentive except their own passion to move in new directions.”

Tezumi, a U.S.-based online Japanese tea seller, offers more than a dozen small lots of black, oolong, and “micro-oxidized” bihakkocha alongside its best-selling matcha. Co-founder David Lavecchia says oxidized teas are easier to brew than some green teas, which can turn bitter and swampy if the water is too hot or the steep runs too long. Tezumi stocks a broad range of oxidized styles to help customers see how much they vary by region and producer.

Organic tea is changing the trade-offs

A cup that makes the case