Description

Mountain-Grown Nara Native Yamatomidori Sencha

This tea comes to us from Tea Crane, a trader specializing in naturally cultivated teas from Japanese small producers. The operator, Tyas Sösen, is a Belgian by birth who has lived in Japan since his later adolescence. There, as the youngest officially certified tea master of foreign origin, he learned the tea trade from scratch. His love for traditional Japanese Sencha teas of regional character ultimately culminated in the founding of The Tea Crane. The underlying philosophy is a return to the original Japanese Sencha. This means that the cultivation is free of artificial fertilizers and pesticides and comparably low in nitrogen. In addition, it means processing that is free of the industrial mass processes that are often characteristic of tea production in Japan today. All this makes Mountain-Grown Nara Native Yamatomidori Sencha a truly traditional Japanese green tea.

In the infusion, the finely crafted, unusually long fir green needles produce a characteristically shimmering light green cup. This, in turn, in terms of taste delights with an idiosyncratic sweetness, embedded in a roundelay of complex vegetal notes.

The Tea Garden – Kitorode

Kitorode (キトロデ) tea garden is located in Tsukigase, a city southeast of Kyoto and Osaka in Japan’s Nara Prefecture. It dates back to the planting of tea seeds of the Nara-native Yamatomidori cultivar in 1964. At that time, seedlings grown from cuttings were more expensive in Japan than raising tea plants from seeds. We owe this fact a tea garden with naturally grown tea bushes, which has become rare in Japan today. The area cultivated with tea bushes has a ratio of about 2:1 to the area overgrown with wild vegetation.

Kitorode Tea Garden

The magmatic soil of the 260 MSL slope consists of a mixture of clay and granite. The resulting soil quality is so high that the tea garden can do without any additional fertilization. The tea bushes stretch in a horizontal line along the south-east facing slope. In this way they get a lot of sunlight, especially in the morning, favoring a comparably early first flush.

Fumiaki Iwata, the tea garden’s operator, is the 17th heir to the Iwata family in Tsukigase, Nara Prefecture, Japan. After graduating from Tokyo’s Agricultural University, the trained farmer initially held a managerial position at Tsukigase Kenkō Chaen. There he soon became president of the company specializing in organic tea cultivation. In 2001 he finally retired from office life to devote himself entirely to the family tea farm.

Fumiaki Iwata

The Cultivar – Yamatomidori

The cultivar finds first mentioning in 1924 as the local agricultural research center’s cultivar “No. 10”. However, it did not receive its name, Yamatomidori, until 1953. The cultivar’s above-average resistance to cold/frost, mildew and anthracnose are considered to be particularly advantageous properties for cultivation. Furthermore, the gentle sweetness, which is quite idiosyncratic in character, is a typical feature of the Yamatomidori tea plant.

Due to the good drainage properties while avoiding backwater, Yamatomidori grows particularly well on slopes. On level ground, on the other hand, the cultivar achieves significantly less good results.

Yamatomidori Kultivar

Preparation – 90°C

When preparing traditional Sencha teas, it is important to know that the “70°C rule” does not apply. Instead, the Mountain-Grown Nara Native Yamatomidori Sencha unfolds its characteristic flavor profile best at an infusion temperature of 90°C. The recommended dosage is about 2-3g of tea leaves per 100ml of (as soft as possible) water. The first of approx. 4 tasty infusions should steep for up to one minute. A second infusion then only takes about 20 seconds to unfold perfect taste. After that, 2 more infusions can do with 1, respectively 2 minutes.

The following blog article provides an overview of the history and basic types of green tea in Japan:

For more (unshadede) Sencha teas at Siam Tea Shop follow the link below:

https://www.siam-teas.com/product-category/tea-from-japan/sencha-tea/