Mr. Ota Yabukita Shincha, Japanese green tea, 50g pack

This is the highest grade early harvest shincha green tea that we are getting this season, produced by Masataka Ota, who is highly praised in the Japanese tea world and has won several national prizes, together with his son. He has been growing tea on the slopes of picturesque Tenryu river in Shizuoka already over 50 years. This area is a bit wilder compared to many other regions, the terrain is mountainous and more difficult to access, there are not that many tea gardens around. Mr. Ota's plants grow on hilly slopes around 600-700 meters above sea level which is quite high for Japanese tea. He follows natural cultivation methods, avoiding the use of agrochemicals, using the perks of higher altitude climate in his fight with pests, as well as through maintaining biodiversity in his gardens and planting various cultivars.

The tea is handpicked in late April to early May from Yabukita cultivar bushes that were shaded for 7 days before the harvest. The steaming was done quick in asamushi fashion and the final heating (hire) was light. The resulting tea is complex, slightly nutty with herbal undertones, it has plenty of umami and a very long lasting finish. It responds beautifully to higher leaf to water ratio, steeped with a cooler temperature of maximum 65C. Shizuoka, Japan.

Shincha, literally "new tea" is the very early first harvest of the season, usually plucked a week or more before the regular harvest. For this style of tea, only the youngest buds and leaves are carefully selected and the tea typically undergoes a very short steaming process, preserving the raw essence of the leaf. Most of shincha is consumed up locally within Japan and very little is sold abroad.