December 2019 Newsletter
- d:matcha tea field（by Chisei T. )
Recently, we made the surface of the tea trees smooth. It is very important not to harvest the stem and the old tea leaves with the new young tea leaves in spring.
We use a different machine that can take away old tea leaves and stems, the opposite way of the harvest machine. This job is very hard and very important.
- d:matcha new sweets （by Natsuki S.）
These days, we are making a new cheesecake for the winter season. It is a "lemon sencha cheesecake: sencha with lemon powder. We have lovely cheesecakes as tasty desserts for christmas sweets. You can taste 4 varieties of cheesecakes on one plate: matcha, hojicha (roasted green tea), Japanese black tea, and lemon tea! Decide which one is your favorite!
- d:matcha（by Daiki T.）
On Nov. 7th 2019, I joined ”The World Tea Expo 2019” in Shizuoka, which is held every three years. It was a very valuable opportunity for me to see the wide varieties of tea in the world and to experience the challenges of producing tea in Shizuoka, which is the biggest green tea production site in Japan.
① Farmers in Shizuoka are trying to cultivate so many different varieties of tea and processes. For example, in addition to green tea, they are producing black tea, oolong tea and gaba tea, made by anaerobic fermentation. I truly like Sencha in Wazuka, because it contains a lot of umami taste but, at the same time, I think the wide varieties of tea are also attractive to satisfy the various needs of our customers. We plan to try to produce new tea.
② I tried the competition grade Sencha which is produced by Mr. Aitou in Kawane, Shizuoka. The tea is not in the market, but he said it has a value of 1.000 USD/kg.
It is very beautiful and shiny. The taste... Oh, it is so smooth, with a nice umami taste and a fresh aroma. A lot of farmers produce a really small amount of tea for the competition. Only for the competition. I truly think we should try the competition grade to get more amount to introduce to our customers. This is one more challenge for us this year. In addition to the local competition, we will challenge several tea contests. I have confidence because we got a really high score when we did a scientific analysis of our tea.
