Japanese Tea Selection — 3 Varieties

Japanese green tea · Smoked black tea · GIAHS farming · Kaneroku Matsumoto-en · Shizuoka

A tea farm in Shizuoka with more than a century of history
Kaneroku Matsumoto-en has been growing tea in Shimada City, Shizuoka Prefecture — Japan's most celebrated tea-producing region — for over a hundred years, since the Edo period. The farm practices Chagusaba farming, a traditional method of cultivating tea that involves cutting and spreading grass from nearby meadows (susuki pampas grass, bamboo grass, and others) beneath the tea plants as mulch. This builds a rich, biodiverse soil that enhances the flavor and fragrance of the leaves. In 2013, Chagusaba farming was designated a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS) by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations — one of the few traditional farming methods in Japan to receive this recognition.

Chagusaba farming — grass mulch spread beneath the tea plants to build soil quality

This set brings together three teas from Kaneroku Matsumoto-en — each distinct in character, and one of them entirely without precedent.

Goku Sencha — premium green tea
Sencha is Japan's most widely drunk green tea — made from the first flush of young shoots, steamed to stop oxidation, then rolled and dried. Kaneroku's Goku Sencha ("goku" meaning "supreme") focuses on the youngest, most umami-rich shoots. The steaming follows the traditional standard method, which preserves a balance of fragrance, umami, and the gentle astringency that distinguishes a well-made sencha from a flat one. The result is smooth on the palate — round rather than sharp.

Genmaicha — green tea with roasted brown rice
Genmaicha is a traditional Japanese blend of green tea and roasted brown rice — the rice adds a toasty, nutty quality that softens the grassiness of the tea and makes it approachable at any time of day. This version is a collaboration between two UNESCO GIAHS-designated farming traditions: Kaneroku's Chagusaba tea from Shizuoka, and brown rice grown in the Senmaida terraced rice paddies of Wajima City, Ishikawa Prefecture — themselves a designated heritage site. The pairing of two heritage-method ingredients in a single cup is not incidental. At the Japan Tea Award 2014, this genmaicha placed first in its category.

Smoked black tea — Japan's first
In 2014, Kaneroku Matsumoto-en introduced Japan's first smoked tea: a Japanese black tea (wakocha) with leaves smoked in a domestic whisky barrel. Japanese black tea is already a niche product — most Japanese tea is green, and the small proportion that is oxidized into black tea is made in a style quite different from Indian or Chinese varieties: lighter in body, cleaner in finish. The addition of whisky barrel smoking gives these leaves a rich, fragrant smokiness that dissipates into a clean, uncluttered aftertaste. There is nothing quite like it. The International Tea Competition 2014 awarded it silver. The Fujinokuni New Product Selection 2014 awarded it gold.

The three-tea selection set