Northwest Tea Festival 2009

Yesterday October 5, Northwest Tea Festival 2009 ended with a great success. People were highly motivated to learn something about teas, and tea experts were knowledgeable enough to answer all the questions asked. This event showed how deep the tea culture took a root in NW area.

Representing SA Japanese Green Tea, I had 2 sessions of the tea tasting and shared my knowledge of Japanese tea culture with tea enthusiasts. It was a lot of fun to talk with tea lovers and heard their feedback about our teas directly. Through the sessions, I found Japanese green teas were not appreciated enough yet and felt the need to provide more chances to learn about Japanese green tea.

During the event, my friend, Ken Rudee of Barnes & Watson Fine Teas gave me a cup of tea. That was Pu'er tea harvested in 1979!! The harvest was before I was born. I had never tried such a long-aging tea, and that was fantastic! Even 7th steep, it had strong flavor and deep body without any astringency. I'm not an expert of Chinese tea, but I could tell the tea was very high quality.

greeTEAing card

I'm very pleased to announce here that our greeTEAing cardTM is finally ready to be marketed. If you want to put a little more thought into the card you are sending to someone special, our greeTEAing card can be your choice. The following is the brief description about 3 kinds of our greeTEAing cards.

greeTEAing card
"Thank You"
Tea Flavor: Sen Cha

Sending your appreciation with our exceptional quality Sen Cha. It surely show your gratitude and thoughtfulness.


greeTEAing card
"Happy Birthday"
Tea Flavor: Hoji Cha

"Happy birthday!" for tea lovers. Hoji Cha has much less caffeine, and it is loved by many tea drinkers of all ages.


greeTEAing card
"Thinking of You"
Tea Flavor: Genmai Cha

Sending hearty message with our award-winning Genmai Cha. This card can be used for any occasion.

Seattle Gift Show 2009

Seattle Gift Show was held from August 22 to 25, and this was our second year to participate in this show. Because of the bad economic time, this show got smaller than the last year, but there were many people coming from Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Oregon and Washington State.

In this show, we introduced a couple of new products - "Teapot Bottle" and "greeTEAing Card." These items are still prototype, but we received a lot of positive feedbacks from many buyers. The "greeTEAing Card" will be available next month, and "Teapot Bottle" is coming in October. I will make an announcement when these items are ready to be marketed.

During the show, we enjoyed meeting many of our existing customers and new customers. I want to express my gratitude to all of the visitors who came to our booth. We hope this show will be a good lead to our business growth in the future.

103

7/29/09. I experienced Seattle's record-breaking moment. Heatwave hit Seattle and the temperature recorded 103 degree!! Yesterday was the hottest day in Seattle's history.

In Shizuoka, where our teas come from, rainy season isn't over yet, so it's hot and humid. The temperature is about 95 degree and humidity is about 80%. During this season, temperature inside of our tea factory gets very high if the roasting process is in progress. It will be 115 degree or sometimes more. My father and brother bear up under this extremely hot working environment to make gourmet green tea.

As many of you already know, tea leaves are weak against heat. So please do not store your tea under the direct sunlight and idealy store in a fridge.

Portland Japanese Garden

I will go to Portland Japanese Garden on this comming Saturday, July 25th to have a tea demonstlation. I'm going to make some iced tea samples as well as hot teas with introducing Japanese tea culture. If you live near Portland, please stop by.

Here is more detail.

http://www.japanesegarden.com/events/behind-the-shoji#tea

Shizuoka!

All of our teas are grown in Shizuoka-prefecture, Japan. Shizuoka is rural area located at the middle of Japan's main island, and known as home of Mt. Fuji. Also, known as production center of quality tea, Shizuoka is to tea in Japan what the Napa Valley is to wine in the United States.

Today, almost half of green tea in Japan is produced in Shizuoka. As you can see on the photo, tea farms spread as far as you can see. Not surprisingly, there are thousands of tea farmers and producers in Shizuoka.

Our tea producer (= my father = Tea Maestro) only buys teas from 11 farmers. He believes "tea quality is determined by tea farmers." Therefore, he works with these farmers and makes sure their farming processes are expert enough. Most importantly, all of his farmers have tea fields on the mountain hills. Unlike other flat tea growing areas, plants grows on steep-sided hills become strong and rich in aroma. Why? The secret is dramatic temperature fluctuation between day and night. It makes tea strong and flavorful.

If you take West-bound "Shinkansen" bullet train from Tokyo, you will pass through Shizuoka. You can see beautiful tea farms from windows.

Summer Harvest

From the end of April to the middle of May, we had Shincha (literally means "new tea") harvest in Shizuoka prefecture. After the Shincha harvest, tea plants gradually grow its second shoots and about 30 days later, Summer harvest begins.

My father, Tea Maestro, just finished the purchase of the Summer-harvested tea leaves. Just like Shincha purchase, his tea farmers brought their tea every morning, and my father tasted every samples and decided how much he wanted to buy. Tea leaves from different farm has different characteristics, and interestingly even the tea leaves harvested from the same tea farm vary its flavor from day to day. My father tries every sample carefully and seeks which tea will have good chemistry when it's blended to other teas.

Nutritiously, tea leaves harvested in Summer have more Catechins than Spring harvest. Catechin is the healthiest nutrition of tea and has astringency of taste. Many studies say Catechin helps you to prevent cancer, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and obesity. For more detail, please visit the "Health Benefits" page of our website.

Our ENRICH series of green tea are mainly made of Summer-harvested tea leaves. If you like astringent taste of green tea, I recommend this series of teas.