Upton Tea Imports Cherrywood Whiskey Barrel Smoked Tea Review

By Richard Thomas

Rating: A-

Japan has its own idiosyncratic varietals of oak used by their whisky industry. Mizunara has become familiar with erudite enthusiasts, as the wood’s characteristic sandalwood notes have found a fan following and it sees more use outside of Japan.

The odd thing is that even among those of us who study Japanese whisky (but don’t actually live in Japan), their use of cherrywood has gone largely unnoticed. I say that is odd because cherry trees have been identified with Japan much longer than anime, Toyota, sushi, katanas and Hello Kitty. The subject of Japanese woods does not come up often in conversation, even among my colleagues, but when it does come up I never hear what is to me an obvious question: why not cherrywood?

The answer is it is in use, and outside Japan to boot. Every Japanese distillery has a cherrywood finished whisky, most recently Suntory. Over in Ireland, both Teeling Whiskey Company and Irish Distillers with their experimental Method And Madness series have done whiskeys aged in cherrywood. Where fashioning casks from cherrywood is too expensive, smoking grain with the wood is an alternative.

Upton Tea Imports has done both. They ground some of those cherrywood whisky barrels into chips and used the chips to smoke Japanese black tea for six to eight hours.

The Tea
This isn’t a strong cup of morning brew, but more in the teatime, pick-me-up vein of afternoon teas. It mixes a mild tannic streak with a note akin to a berry-driven red wine and a current that is half-smoke, half-ash. This is quite distinct from the oak whisky barrel smoked tea I tried last month, and somewhat better in that it is more approachable for folks who aren’t absolute smokeheads. The smoky side here is strong, but moderate enough that folks who appreciate a current of smoke in their barbecue, chili or street corn, but are turned off by something like Islay single malts, will appreciate it.

The Price
A 30 gram packet is $38.50, which comes out to $2.89 per cup.