Kaga Bōcha (加賀棒茶, Ishikawa roasted-stem tea)

The leaves have already had their turn. Kaga Bōcha begins with the stems, the pale stalks separated from first-flush tea and roasted until they smell sweet, toasty, and faintly like caramel. That is why it isn't ordinary hōjicha in a nicer cup. The stem is the point.

The first secret is water temperature. Sencha asks you to cool the water and speak softly. Kaga Bōcha wants the opposite: water just off the boil, because the roast and the stems give fragrance more readily than bitterness. If you brew it timidly, you get brown hot water wearing a good name, and nobody needs that little lecture from a teapot.

The second secret is dose and time. Use more tea than looks reasonable, because stems are bulky, then steep briefly and pour every drop. The last drops carry the richest aroma, and leaving them behind makes the next cup woody. This is honmono made reachable: a kyūsu if you have one, a small French press if you don't, and five calm minutes.

At the table it sits where a daily tea should, after rice, beside a small sweet, or late in the evening when a heavy cup would be unkind. The stems come from spring's shincha, the new tea, but Kanazawa drinks this warmth all year. Leave the cup half full. The fragrance needs room too.