Seven tiers from two growing regions: five from Japan and two from Hangzhou.
Regions like Uji have grown tea for over 800 years. We buy from growers and mills directly, no importer in between, and visit in person to see the harvest, the shading, and the milling before it ever reaches a bag.
Field to tin.
How our five Japanese tiers are made, in five steps. What changes between those tiers is the harvest and the cultivar, not the discipline.
Weeks under cloth.
Before harvest, the bushes are covered from direct sun. Less light means more chlorophyll and amino acids, the color and sweetness that separates tencha from ordinary green tea.
By hand, for the top tiers.
First-flush leaves for our top tiers are picked by hand. Higher-volume lots for Miyabi are mechanically harvested from the same fields.
Within hours of picking.
Leaves are steamed the same day to halt oxidation, locking in color and flavor before they're dried into tencha.
Stone-milled to order.
Dried tencha is stone-milled in small batches, timed to demand rather than milled ahead and left to sit.
Sealed the same day.
Milled matcha is packed and sealed on the day it's milled, to keep the oxidation clock as short as possible before it ships. 1 kg orders go out in foil bags to hold that freshness in transit.
The steps above describe our five Japanese tiers. Hinata and Kiwami are sourced from Hangzhou.
One of our routes: Uji to your door.
Five cultivars, one blend.
Wakaba is blended from five Uji cultivars rather than a single varietal, each contributing a different note, balanced by hand at the mill rather than left to one field's harvest alone.
