Premium Green Tea

This is a very nice selection from our 2024 harvest. Meeting our highest standards, a fine specimen of premium green tea.

This tea is gently aromatic and sweet with mild astringency.  We like enjoying fresh green flavor of new growth earlier in the season.
Over time raw green-ness softens and with stronger roast the tea gives more round, sweet and rich taste.
If you like premium tea with full roast, please see Premium Green Tea – Extra Roast.

As spring warms up, new tips slowly grow on our cool mountain slope from the long rest of winter.

Our Premium Green Tea is made from traditional two leaves and a bud and small batch processing. Young tender tips are harvested with utmost care to retain their freshness, which contains high level of antioxidants. Harvested leaves are then processed in a small batch to give unique twist and curves to the leaves as they dry. Repeated rolling and unique drying motion slowly removes moisture from the leaves. The result: a wonderfully fresh and aromatic green tea, crisp with a mild sweetness of roast.

Over time our tea making has evolved and aligned more with our traditional tea making values.  Elderly tea makers from Japan often say, “That is how tea used to taste like.”  They did not have factory automation to maintain consistency and fresh green quality, yet they seemed to be more content with their lives.

We maintain our tea field without use of pesticides and herbicides, working with natural forest environment and variety of farm animals and wildlife.  Without chemicals to enhance tea flavors and colors, our tea plants maintain very humble look yet surprise many people with purity and potency.  It is pure hand made quality that preserve seasonality and the conditions of natural surroundings.

Steeping:

We recommend you use good quality spring water with moderate amount of minerals (50-100mg/L).  In tea ceremony, practitioners often say that the best way to evaluate the quality of water is through tea.

Start with 2-3 grams of tea leaf per 8oz cup.  Bring water to light boil (180F) and steep tea for 2 minutes. This tends to produce tea with very little bitterness.  If you like more bitterness and high aromatic note, use hotter water (190F) for 2 minutes.

Second steeping requires less time since the leaves are open yet less surface flavor from roasting may be noticeable.  You can also extend steeping time for stronger taste.