Bold Flavor Ito En

March 22, 2025

Unfortunately my nails are covering the red accent on the bottle…

I am an Ito En addict. I love green tea, but I would die for Ito En. I’m not sure when my Ito En obsession began, but I’d estimate 2019. There was probably a year where I was drinking two to three bottles of Ito En a day. I cut back to one for a while… and now I’m back to two.

So, I’ve had a lot of Ito En. It’s probably the greatest source of microplastics I knowingly consume in my life. But given my extensive consumption, my favorite flavors ebb and flow over time. Sometimes its the regular flavor I like best… I had a jasmine phase… a hojicha phase… the organic Ito En phase… even the Oolong. But right now my favorite is the Bold Flavor.

According to the Ito En website, the regular flavor and the bold flavor have basically the same caffeine content (60 mg), but the bold has a much more concentrated umami taste to it. This umami taste is maybe truer to Ito En’s roots than their regular flavor.

Ito En was started in the 1960s, and has a surprisingly innovative past. Historically, people had to go to tea stores and get loose leaf tea weighed out and bring it home to enjoy. Ito En (according to their website) was the first company to pre-package tea, making it available for purchase at grocery stores.

Then, in the 1970s, it was the first company to import Oolong tea into Japan. In 1980, it created the first canned oolong tea, and in 1984, the first canned green tea (sencha).

Ito En has a Sencha Shot product that I also like a lot, and I think it is a direct descendent of this 1984 canned green tea beverage.

In 1989, the tea was rebranded to Oi Ocha (via Japanese commercial), and resembles what Ito En looks like today. I just learned that the subtle pattern on the design of the cans/bottles evokes bamboo to allude to bamboo’s historical significance as a traditional water flask.

In 1990, Ito En again disrupted the iced tea packaging market (lol) by introducing plastic bottles. To prevent natural tea leaf sediment, the company had to invent a new filtration method to catch stray tea leaf fragments.

In 2000, they made a heatable plastic bottle to address the desire for hot tea during winter. You can see these warming cabinets with Ito En bottles all over Japan. My favorite warm flavor is the Hojicha.

Anyway, they also won more recent awards regarding business practices and sustainability, but those feel like dumb business fluff.

(As an aside, their corporate “about” page taught me that they have a museum!!! That I am definitely going to go to!!! On my next trip!!! To Japan!!! I love life!!!)

There are a few things I love about bold flavor Ito En. I talked about the taste earlier, and just how it’s more robust and feels like the main event, rather than the more muted pure refreshment of the regular flavor. But my equally favorite thing is the color palette.

The bold flavor Ito En has a really deep green, gold, and lime green, with just a dash of red color palette. It is something that I wouldn’t think would work on paper, but I think it’s really elegant and beautiful. These deeper type of jewel tones mixed with metallic just feels really sophisticated, while the lime green and red keep it contemporary. It’s like if Sailor Neptune was a beverage.

The increased umami flavor contributes to its satiation. When I was in Japan last year I picked up a bold flavor Ito En to go walk around Tokyo. I noticed the packaging looked a little different, and on further inspection I saw that it was labeled as “Reduces Body Fat” and “For those with a high BMI gallate-type catechins”. Apparently gallate-type catechins promote autophagy, and a billion other purported health benefits. The casual referral of “gallate-type catechins” on the label just seems so unhinged to me, because even just saying “promote autophagy” is extremely scientific, let alone “gallate-type catechins” lol.

I especially like the gold cap on the Japanese version of the drink

The weight loss advertisement on the tea made me realize it was a result of Japan’s emphasis on thinness. Whenever I think of products in the US that are advertised to help you slim down, it’s almost a direct warning it will have the opposite effect. Like if you have to label something “gourmet”, it already isn’t. But this product actually does help promote weight loss in some minute sense.

I liked the tea before I learned it’d make me skinny, but it doesn’t hurt to have that added bonus.