── A taste born from 40 years, an aroma refined by 1 year ──
The other day, I visited Yame City in Fukuoka Prefecture and had the opportunity to see the preparation site for tea picking.
First of all, I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the neatly spreading tea fields. The tea bushes are managed to a uniform height of about 50 cm from the ground. It actually takes 40 years for them to grow to that point. It is a landscape that is finally complete not within the span of human work, but in “generational time” accumulated alongside nature. I felt that this grand scale directly connects to the depth of Yame tea 😊.
Furthermore, tea making consists of an accumulation of year-round preparations. In the autumn of the previous year, a task called “Autumn Trimming” (Aki-seishi) is performed, where about 10 cm from the top of the tea bushes is trimmed off. This is a task to “refine the taste of the future,” so to speak, to make the new shoots of the following spring uniform. Carefully accumulating what humans can do to stabilize the taste and quality while aligning with nature—I realized that this very effort is the source of Japanese tea’s brand power. And just before harvesting, even more precise processes continue.
First, trash and dead leaves that have fallen on the tea leaves are carefully blown away to neatly clear the surface of the field. When a black net with an 80% shading rate is placed over it, the tea leaves try to maximally absorb the mere 20% of light, rapidly increasing their chlorophyll. I hear this process is the secret that creates the deep umami and elegant aroma characteristic of Yame tea. Borrowing the power of nature, human skill adds depth to the taste in the final finishing touches.
I was deeply moved once again by the profoundness of Japanese tea making. (To be continued)
* Related Article: Welcome to Yame Japan
* You might also be interested in our past article: UX Design and UI Design (Part 2) ~ Seeds of Marketing #67