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.

World Tea Expo 2009

World Tea Expo 2009 was held from May 2 to 4 at Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. This year, 228 companies gathered from all over the world, and about 5,000 people had been expected to attend to this show. The first year of the World Tea Expo was 2003, and within 6 years, this show has grown more than 7 times bigger.

This year was our 2nd consecutive year to participate to the show under SA Japanese Green Tea. We really enjoyed to meet some of our customers and to talk with them. For new customers, we explained how Japanese green tea was different from Chinese green tea and especially how our tea was different from other Japanese green teas. Just like other trade shows, I made more that 800 cups of teas as a sample and got many positive feedbacks from customers.

World Tea Championship was also held during the World Tea Expo. And our Genmai cha was selected as 3rd place of blended/flavored green tea category!! I'm very pround that our Genmai cha received such a honor 2 years in a row.

Shincha Season Began

Following to the Temomi Shincha event, Sugimoto Seicha Japan began 2009 Shincha season. Our tea farms are changing its color to bright yellowish green. I'd like to share some photos of our tea fields.

Temomi Shincha is now ready!

An event to make Temomi Shincha was held on April 19th at Sugimoto Seicha Japan. Unlike other years, we invited only 7 experienced Temomi artisans to the event because 2009 Temomi Shincha are sold onto the market. (Last year, about 60 people were invited to the event because the purpose of the event was introducing the Temomi Shincha to the public.)

There were a lot of "specials"for 2009 Temomi Shincha.
First of all, this year's raw leaves came from our own tea field. We usually buy the leaves from our contract farmers.
However from 3 years ago, we started cultivating our own, small tea field and this year's leaves were the first harvest from the field! You may wonder what is so special for our tea field? Tea plants in our tea field are grown in its natural form. Usually tea farmers prune the tea plants to make their production volume large. Unpruned tea plants called "Bara-ki" doesn't have much production volume but has much more sweetness and nutrition.
Second, for a week before the harvest, we covered the tea field by a black cloth just like Gyokuro and Matcha do. By doing so, we cut the sun light off the field, and it allowed tea plants to stock up the natural sweetness.

We started the hand-pick harvest from 8AM with 10 helpers of local tea farmers. The hand-pick harvest continued until 11AM and about 3 kg (6.6 lb.) of raw leaves were gathered. From 10:30AM, Temomi artisans started their preparation and the first step "steaming" took place. After the steaming, hand-kneading started and it continued until 4:30PM. The kneading process was took place on the hot plate called "Hoiro," and wet tea leaves were drying up along with the kneading. At the end, 1.8 kg (4 lb.) of beautiful Temomi Shincha was created by the artisans' hands.

Now the Temomi Shincha is comming to the U.S. by air. Probably we can ship the Temomi Shincha from Seattle within a week!

Touch Leaves!

My brother started working with my father about 10 years ago, and now he is in charge of the production part (mainly roasting and packaging process) of our tea factory. The most important process in the tea production - BLENDING is still my father's job; 10-year experience is not enough to master the secret of blending.

"Touch leaves"

This is the words my father is always saying to my brother. "When farmers bring tea leaves. Before and after the roasing process. Before the packaging. Always touch the leaves. Otherwise, you cannot understand the nature of tea." Following his advise, my brother is now climbing the ladder of Tea Maestro.
Among the hundreds of tea leaves, choose right leaves, decide proportion of each leaves, and blend in the right procedure. These artistic processes bring chemistry to our teas, and it's the only way to supply quality tea leaves to customers.

SFIGF09 & Natural Product Expo 09

It has been a while, but there were two trade shows which my company participated to.

The first one is San Francisco International Gift Fair (SFIGF) held in February at the Moscone Convention Center. It was our second time to participate to the gift show - the first time was Seattle Gift Show 08. Compared to the Seattle's show, SFIGF was huge, and I could meet many buyers from famous companies such as Deans & Deluca.

This time, our sales rep. Xcidia had a booth and our products was a part of their products. I was very pleased that many customers came to the booth and tried our tea. There were many people prefer Sen cha and Hoji cha, but mostly Genmai cha was the top favorite during the show.

The second show was Natural Product Expo 2009 held in March at Anaheim Convention Center. Just like Fancy Food Show in January, Shizuoka-prefecture (the area where our teas come from) had a booth at the show, and my company was selected as one of the two companies helping them at the booth. Because green tea is the most famous agricultural product in Shizuoka, they chose us to intrduce authentic Shizuoka green tea. Another company exhibiting at the booth is Tamaruya, which is very traditional Wasabi company. Combination of green tea and Wasabi received a lot of favorable comments from customers.