Step One: Growing The Tea 

By far, the most productive tea-growing regions are in Shizuoka, producing nearly half of Japan’s tea at 45%, and Kagoshima, producing about 20%. Surprisingly, Shizuoka’s topography is dominated by mountains and hills, not allowing for large-scale plantations or big farming equipment. The vast majority of Shizuoka’s tea farms are still operated as family farms or small farming cooperatives. Kagoshima is likely home to the best organic tea farms in all of Japan.

Among our tea farms are several organic certified farms and high elevation farms, as well as a cooperative that has won the Prime Minister’s Award, the highest honor in agriculture in all of Japan! Our team works exclusively with a select group of artisan farmers who have a passion for quality green tea.

Visit one of our green tea farms and you will see our farmers meticulously tending their plants, tenderly touching the tea leaves, and even talking to them. It’s a nurturing relationship that produces outstanding results.

In Japan, the tea industry consists of both tea growers and tea makers. Tea farmers focus on growing the best tea leaf possible, imbued with the flavor and unique qualities offered by the local terroir.

After harvesting and minimal processing, the farmers produce aracha (“crude tea”). Tea makers take this aracha and produce all the different varieties of green tea.

Great tea is a cooperative effort between artisan farmers and masterful tea makers Our matcha is grown in full sunlight, then shaded 3 weeks prior to harvest. 

STEP 2: Drying The Leaves

Japanese tea is DEFINED BY PROCESS - there is no region by region tea like you get from chinese tea.

As opposed to China (where tea is different region by region), Japanese tea is defined by how it is processed after it’s grown (part of the process is the shading prior to harvest).

After the leaves are picked, they are dried in a convection style dryer. The leaves are blown around in a chamber that removes stems, leaf veins and dries the tea.

After the drying, one ends up with a fluffy, loose leaf tea called TENCHA (pronounced ten-sha) Definition of matcha in japan is actually “milled tencha” This is when our tea grower gets the tea leaves -- after it has been dried and is in the stage of the process known as “tencha”

STEP 3: Aging, grinding and packaging

Our Tea maker has the tencha and ages it, mills it (grinds) and then packages it

The tea maker we work with recently opened a facility 100% dedicated to matcha production.

Once the maker has acquired the tencha, it is aged in fridge for several months.

The next step is grinding -- we use something called a bead mill. The bead mill uses the collision of small ball bearings in a chamber, colliding, if there’s a leaf in between balls colliding, it breaks apart..because it’s an instantaneous collision and not grinding against each other, there is no frictional heat generated, so you don't lose color or flavor (HEAT is the enemy of matcha at this stage, so our milling process is designed to create no additional, frictional heat)

Once the matcha is ground in the bead mill, it is time to pack it. We pack it using a nitrogen flushing process, which removes 100% of the oxygen from the foil bag.