Hanami Black Tea - A tea like an ephemeral bloom
When we name a new tea, there's always a desire to open a door to the imagination—an invitation to travel from the very first syllables. With Hanami, we take you to Tokyo, to the heart of Ueno Park, when the first cherry blossoms open in early April, a promise of rebirth.
Based on a very smooth Chinese black tea, Hanami unfolds a full, generous, and captivating floral score. Flowers first invite themselves onto the palate: the tiare flower, sunny, exotic, almost voluptuous, opens the dance with its sweet and enveloping scents. It is joined by jasmine, pure and elegant. These two flowers make up the head of the infusion, like a vibrant bouquet placed under a spring sky.
Then the tasting evolves towards a more gourmet roundness: the vanilla, creamy and caressing, softens the flowers, while the cherimoya, a rare fruit with notes of ripe pear, banana and milky vanilla, unfolds its tender and fragrant flesh. The heliotrope, with its almost pastry-like and slightly musky sweetness, acts as a binder between the floral freshness and the sweet warmth, bringing a melting texture and an unexpected depth.
Under the Cherry Trees – A Season in Suspended
Hanami, literally “flower gazing,” is much more than just a seasonal ritual in Japan. It's an art of living focused on the ephemeral, a suspended moment where nature, in all its delicacy, reveals itself to be seen—and felt. For a few days, the entire country slows down, as if held in suspense by this explosion of pale pink and snow white, both fragile and triumphant. Parks are adorned with strollers, colorful fans, and tablecloths carefully unfurled on the still-fresh grass. It's a celebration of the present moment, of beauty in its most fleeting form.
Our Hanami tea was born from this atmosphere—and from a personal experience. Our flavorist lived in Japan for several years. For her, the Hanami season was more than just a spectacular bloom: it was synonymous with floating sweetness, feverish anticipation, and blissful melancholy. It was the scent of tiare she found on silk scarves, jasmine in hot inn baths, vanilla and cherimoya in the sweets shared at evening picnics. Flowers, fruits, the warm air, and the slower passage of time—all these elements became the pillars of the composition she imagined for Hanami.
Hanami, or the Art of Contemplation
We dare to savor Hanami alone, in a Japanese bowl with golden cracks — like a burst of life repaired by gold — in silence, to better hear the rustling of the inner flowers…
Or accompanied by a fragrant mochi, a matcha financier, a rose rice cake, or an orange blossom shortbread. Hanami also lends itself to an iced infusion, for a summer hanami—a moment suspended beneath the branches, barefoot on the warm earth. With Hanami, each cup becomes a poetic moment, a celebration of the fragile beauty of the world.
