After a few months waiting we are happy to share that a fresh shipment of matcha has arrived in stock. Our matcha comes to you directly from a wonderful producer that we know our Australian tea and Brisbane tea communities will thoroughly enjoy.
With most things we do at The Steepery Tea Co. our sourcing decisions are ultimately made by our connection with the producers and their stories. We lean towards innovative and sustainable farming practices and are particularly interested in single-cultivar teas. To be honest we had no intention to source matcha during our tea study tour to Japan (2018) but an encounter with a matcha producer left a real impression on us that we have been considering since late last year.
We are delighted to introduce our single-cultivar Okumidori Matcha from Mr Yoshiaki. Produced in Shizouka this matcha thoroughly surprised us, it is of exceptional quality within a price point that will allow many people to enjoy it.
We wanted to share a little bit more about our matcha and Mr Yoshiaki's ethos and tea garden management principles. We feel that this will help you appreciate this beautiful matcha even more.
1. Single-cultivar tea
We like our teas to be distinctive and find joy in discovering the singular. Gaining an appreciation of how a specific cultivar tastes is a passion of ours and provides much enjoyment.
The Okumidori cultivar is normally utilised for sencha production and is a blend of Yabukita and native Zarai. It is a later budding cultivar making it resistant to frost. More recently it is being used to produce gyokuro and matcha due to its rich colour and sweetness.
For some matcha consumers you may not realise that matcha tends to be a blended tea, witha recipe of cultivars, to achieve a certain flavour profile for their customers.
2. A clean and crisp flavour
Mr Yoshiaki has been natural farming (free of pesticides) for 25 years, and organic farming for 6 years. Our producer holds eurofins certification demonstrating there is no chemical residue on his tea.
With a focus on maintaining healthy soil condition without the use of chemicals and fertilisers and a unique approach to shading his teas we feel this is key to the delightful flavour of this matcha.
3. A matcha that comes from an innovative and sustainable producer
One of the first images I saw was of Mr Yoshiaki's photovoltaic power generation system that is installed above his matcha producing tea fields. Whilst I thought the generation of electricity via this method was genius I was sceptical of the taste. Serving 2 purposes, the solar panels generate electricity that provides income to the producer that is used to help pay for weeding and shading materials and it also provides a secondary level of shading and retention of amino acids (equals umami and sweetness).
When I asked Mr Yoshiaki about his approach to tea garden management he explained to me how important soil condition is to him. He believes that if the soil constituents are balanced the tea trees roots can absorb the nutrients resulting in high quality and good yields. Healthy roots will make healthy stems, and good leaves will grow on them.
And a bonus reason this matcha will delight you...it is friendly on the wallet
When sourcing this tea we made a decision to forgo the small aluminium tins that many matcha products comes packaged in. The main reason is because those tins do little by way of storage to protect your matcha and they are (ridiculously) expensive. So by packaging our matcha in the pouches you are getting a better deal. $30 for 30G of matcha goodness.
The foil lined pouches are thick and are the best material for keeping the very precious matcha cargo in top condition. Following stone-milling the matcha is packed immediately into the 30G pouches, the oxygen removed and an oxygen absorber placed into the tea...you're welcome 🙇♀️
If you have wanted to try matcha don't let us stop you....you will find it here!
