Products DNA
Generally speaking, green tea you drink in your daily life is mostly blended tea. Tea leaves are collected from all over Japan and blended by chashi (tea masters) in each tea production area and made into commercial goods. Taste and quality of agricultural products in general, including tea, are affected by the climate of the year. By blending, you can produce a large amount of tea of almost the same taste.
This advantage also makes it possible to produce tea of stable quality. It is the reason why blended tea has become the mainstream. Single variety tea has unique flavor and characteristics because it is produced by a particular farm. Still many people have an image of green tea as a kind of mass-produced daily commodity, but it is pleasing that the number of single variety lovers are on the increase year after year.
About Saitama Tea
“Sayama-tea/SINGLE ORIGIN TEA Branding Strategy Project” started in 2018. Its goal is to establish a brand which allows us to taste single variety tea leaves developed especially in Saitama-prefecture. It avoids blending other tea leaves. The leading variety teas Sayamakaori, Okuharuka, Musashikaori, Fukumidori, and Yumewakaba are introduced in Sayama-tea/SINGLE ORIGIN TEA.
All of them are cultivated mainly in Saitama-prefecture and each of the five kinds has its unique characteristics. The expression SINGLE ORIGIN is already familiar in the world of wine, whisky, and coffee, but its sign is only appearing in the world of green tea. Please enjoy SINGLE ORIGIN TEA with your own eyes, nose and tongue and find your favorite variety.
Sayama-tea is well known partly because it is produced in Saitama, a next-door neighbor to Capital Tokyo. When did it come to be produced and become familiar to people? There seems to be many theories about the origin of tea. According to an ancient document, the origin seems to date back to the 1200s. It was about the time Marco Polo traveled around the world, therefore, without doubt tea began to be drunk hundreds of years ago.
Generally, tea products sold all over Japan have standardized quality due to tea leaves collection and blending. It is true that this system decreases various risks and allows stable supply of tea. However, in Sayama, many farmers have been making efforts every day to produce and market their single variety tea. Farmers in Sayama are working hard, taking every measure, in raising their single variety tea plants, but their tea tastes different from year to year.
