Prague Tea Fest 2025 was a blast and we couldn’t wait to tell you all about it!
This special and warm festival brings together tea lovers and connoisseurs from all over Europe and beyond. Participating as the Global Japanese Tea Association, we wanted to do something special and a bit different this time: a chakabuki workshop!
Chakabuki (茶歌舞伎) is essentially a Japanese blind tea-tasting game that originated around the 14th century. Though it has evolved over the centuries, it is still widely played today, especially among professionals in the tea industry in Japan. It can be very challenging, but also a lot of fun!
After having this idea and announcing the workshop on the festival program, a flock of people quickly signed up. The logistics of such a game are not easy, as it involves brewing different teas one after the other, quite quickly – and in our case, washing the teaware in between.
Luckily, our Japanese tea community never stops surprising us, and many of our Tea Fellows stepped up to help. Zita, Steen, Marta, and Cinzia had the very difficult task of brewing and serving the teas. They didn’t even know each other before the workshop, yet they organized themselves smoothly, worked fast, and did a perfect job!
After an introduction of our association, we talked about the history of chakabuki and explained its rules. Due to time constraints, we did a shorter version, brewing 3 teas instead of 5. Our choice was quite challenging, but the participants did great! We brewed one gyokuro from Yoshida Meichaen in Uji, one sencha from Kyoto Obubu Tea Farms in Wazuka, and one sencha from DOIT! FARM! in Kamo. All the teas were brewed with hot water using the same parameters, which made it tricky to even tell a gyokuro apart from a sencha.
The challenge in chakabuki also lies in the rule of having to make your guess immediately after tasting a tea, before the next one arrives. It was indeed quite complicated, but hopefully also informative. And most of all, participants (and we) had fun!
Thank you to everyone who joined (even some GJTea members!) and for all the enthusiasm you showed! A special thanks to our invaluable Tea Fellow and Catalyst members: Sofie Vercauteren, who kindly took the photos for this article, and Zita Varga, Steen Pipper, Marta Skorupska, and Cinzia Merlin, who were in charge of the brewing.