We are excited to be introducing shincha from Yakushima again, an island off the south east coast of Kyushu and part of Kagoshima prefecture.

The tea garden was initially started by his dad and two other friends from school in 1985, eight years before Yakushima was registered as a UNESCO World Natural Heritage site. As the second generation, Watanabe san speaks passionately about organic farming and the island’s agricultural advantages. As the island has foggy mornings, high temperatures in the day time, and cold evenings and nights, this makes for a great environment to grow tea. In addition, the island itself is a collection of many mountains, which allows for ample rainwater to flow down through the tea fields along the way to the sea.

We tasted this single cultivar Kuritawase, a rare cultivar and one of the earliest picked, with Watanabe san. It was harvested in early April and has a sweet, extremely fresh profile with a light savoury profile, an underlying soft vegetal tone throughout and a smooth light astringency to finish. It is like a refreshing taste of spring after a harsh winter.

The family runs all aspects of the tea’s life from growing, harvesting, processing, packing and finally selling. The tea factory is next door to the tea shop and just over the treeline behind are the beautiful tea fields, with a wooden terrace built in between the tea fields which makes a perfect spot to go and enjoy a delicious ryokucha soft serve ice cream from the tea shop!

Kuritawase is an extremely rare variety, accounting for less than 1% of the total tea production in Japan, so we hope you dont miss out this chance to taste it!