Introduction:
Ashikubo Tea Works is a company and region that has a special place in my heart. They were the first Japanese farm I started importing from directly, the first farm I visited in Shizuoka, the first tea farm my daughter and wife have been to, the first micro region I made a specific map for, and they created the first sencha that I thought was worth me putting my reputation behind. When my family visited them in 2022, we returned to Canada with one of every product they carried. I made some discoveries by doing that which unexpectedly steered my preferences towards what I’m bringing in for the 2023 year. I’m excited to share with you all 2 single origin and mono-cultivar sencha teas made from the strains Okumidori and Yamakai. These teas create a totally different experience than what many people have experienced in ‘boring old sencha’.

The Pitch:
Can I say: “guys, I’m one of you — I think sencha is boring too!”
Sencha at face value is boring as fuck. It’s almost always the same edamame, basil, nori seaweed notes wrapped up and repackaged in different proportions. Sometimes more bitter, sometimes more astringent, bleh.
Do you think I spent 5 hours writing this article to pitch you something boring? Read the next paragraph!

How the ‘Angel of Takeshita’ Okumidori tastes:
Have you ever had an Avocado Milkshake? It’s close to that. If you can conjure up the aroma of sweet, milky avocado, and combine it with the warm toasted notes of a waffle cone, the eggy and buttery notes in crepes, and the nuttiness of almonds, it would be a good approximation of this tea.

Why ‘Angel of Takeshita’ ? What is Takeshita?
Takeshita is a street name in Harajuku, Tokyo. I’ve been to Japan many times but Tokyo only once, and that was 17 years ago. I remember only a few things about Tokyo. I remember the Aquarium having sharks, I remember that Yoyogi Park being pretty big, I remember my wife buying some white boots in Shibuya to fit in with the Japanese fashion while we were on vacation, and I remember this ‘Takeshita’ street in Harajuku for 2 reasons: One was seeing a 6 foot tall Japanese guy dressed up in a full black, German SS military suit with the skull hat, arm band, and all; but no one paying him any attention.  The 2nd memory and where this tea gets its name is about a little crepe shop that seems to still be there today; it’s called ‘Sweet Box’ right next to NOA coffee and the entrance to Takeshita Street. Before this experience, I never had a crepe in my life. But there I was, standing off to the side of the shop, eating my strawberry and whipped cream crepe when across the street I saw an angel. Across the street was a cafe (now it seems like it’s a cat cafe) and in the window there was a table of women sitting down and chatting, more specifically 2 women and 1 angel. I was in literal awe, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a beautiful looking being before (I haven’t since) — so I stood there, eating my crepe, staring across the street into the window at an angel. I told my girlfriend (wife now) in that moment, that I felt a necessity, an obligation as a human being to walk across the street into the cafe, say hello, and express my awe — but I didn’t speak Japanese at the time and therefore couldn’t. I don’t remember if my girlfriend was willing to help me out with this and my memory is a bit hazy here, but I think I called it off out of shyness/awkwardness/creepiness. Well, it’s a memory anyway. It certainly cemented the flavor of crepes into my soul, and this tea really climbed that cement structure and shouted “CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPES” at me.

Why does it taste like that?
Two towns in central Shizuoka have historically created some of the best sencha in all of Japan, these towns are called Ashikubo and Tamakawa. They can create such magnificent teas thanks to a concept called terroir; essentially meaning there are beneficial climactic conditions created by the mountains and river systems, morning fog, water drainage, elevation, and so on. These attributes are conducive to creating fine tea, and these towns are blessed with many positive traits (and very few negatives). There are lot of spiders there though.

I think it would be fair to say that most Japanese green tea in the connoisseur market boasts a high level of an amino acid called l-Theanine. l-Theanine contributes the umami and perception of sweetness in brewed tea. l-Theanine is a fundamental building block for the tea bush, it’s used to create the ‘machinery’ that allows it to grow, thrive, and survive. In the early 1600’s it was observed (and recorded) that tea from mountains often seemed to taste better than tea from the plains. Mountain tea seemed to have a better colour, more caffeine, and less tannin. After isolating variables in terroir one by one, it was determined that a significant portion of teas flavor comes from sunlight or lack thereof. Mountains naturally have more shade than plains, and in the Northern Hemisphere, the North West facing slopes of mountains get the least amount of light available. In an area with a lot of shade, tea will struggle to grow, but it’s because of this struggle that preferential flavors in the tea will form and/or remain. The Japanese acknowledged this hundreds of years ago and as a result created the purposely shaded styles of teas that we know today as kabusecha, gyokuro, and matcha. With modern diagnostics, we have found that the abundance of l-Theanine is one of the main reasons why things like high quality sencha, matcha, and gyokuro taste like they do. By definition, sencha is a young leaf tea that grows without any artificial shading (though it’s not uncommon to see modern famers shading their sencha for a few days before harvest). When the tea bush has access to sunlight, it will suck up nutrients from the ground, create l-Theanine, and use the l-Theanine to build photo cells, leaves, lignen, etc. in order to grow. If the bush is forced into shade, it cannot produce the machinery it needs to, and it supposes that the problem is that it doesn’t have enough chlorophyll, so it focuses on creating light-catching receptors (but it’s never enough… ha ha ha)  and accumulates l-Theanine. It’s an interesting phenomenon that strangely it seems only Japan really takes advantage of in the world. Due to the terroir of Ashikubo and Tamakawa, nature will create a tea that without any human intervention will have shade cover and umami levels comparable to those ‘purposefully’ shaded teas. Ashikubo is indeed a very special place, the teas heralding from there dubbed ‘natural gyokuro’.

AND THEN, we’ll talk about Okumidori. You may not have heard of it, that’s fine. Nobody outside of tea geeks knows anything about cultivars, but I’m here to tell you that Okumidori makes some gangster stuff, and whether you see it used for sencha, gyokuro, or matcha, the tea is usually pretty distinctly lactose sweet-creamy. I still have to build this part up a bit more.

Notes about Shizuoka:
These days Shizuoka is the major tea-producing region in Japan. It sections off into 4 main areas: Western, Central, Fuji, and Izu. Fuji and Izu aren’t really major players in the tea game so we can forget about them. The western plains area makes the volume, and the central mountainous area makes the quality. All of the best Japanese teas I’ve had in life come from Shizuoka’s central area along the two major river systems; the Warashina and Abe Rivers. The best teas in Japan grow along the tributaries which form these major rivers; these teas are dubbed ‘hon yama cha’ or ‘authentic mountain tea’ and have been famous since the Shogun’s ruled Japan. The most renowned of which feed into the Abe river.

The Hon Yama teas along the Abe river system come from the areas of Umegashima, Tamakawa, Ashikubo, and Hirayama. In Umegashima is where the Abe river begins and merges with the Daiya river. As it flows South it first meets with the Tamakawa area which includes the rivers of Senmata, Nakakouchi, and Nishigouchi. As it continues South it meets the Ashikubo area which consists of just Ashikubo river. It might not have relevance to tea but there is no dam on Ashikubo river; in my mind, the minerality flows from the top of the mountain to the Abe river unhindered, that might just be a romantic thought though. It’s right around the same latitude North where you’ll find Hirayama, but Hirayama is quite a ways East of the river. Ashikubo was the first area in Shizuoka to be planted with tea and has been famous since the Kamakura Period (1185–1333), the well-known Shogun of the Edo Period Tokugawa Ieyasu also had a preference for Ashikubo tea.

The best teas from around the Warashina river come from the major ‘Oku-Warashina’ area which includes the minor areas of Oma, Morokozawa, and Okawa and their tributaries the Morokozawa River, Tochizawa River, Kuruzeno River, Hi River, Sakamoto River, and Kuromata River. The Kuromata river flows south and breaks off into another wonderful area of the Warashina river system: The Asahina River area of Fujieda. This place is amazing for gyokuro, and I truly hope to have a gyokuro from Asahina for sale here one day.

The Hon Yama teas experience an important climate phenomenon which is surely a major reason behind their quality, this is called a diurnal shift. A diurnal shift is a big swing in temperatures from day and night, generally that the day is very hot and the night is very cold, this will slow down the growth of the tea bushes and cause them to produce less quantity of a higher quality leaf.

Notes about Ashikubo Tea Works:
Ashikubo tea works is a cooperative of about 50 tea farmers who are trying to keep the interest of tea alive in Japan. It’s a very youthful company. In the processing of tea every step benefits from ‘specialty experience’ and thus the coop has ‘chashi’ (tea instructors) to lead teams through the picking, steaming, rolling, and drying processes. I had first tried one of their products called ‘Mine no Kaori’ in Feb 2020 as the April 2019 crop (so nearly 9 months old) and the quality was quite exceptional. ‘Mine no Kaori’ is among their flagship products and when I drank it for the first time I decided that this should be the tea that kicks off my selection of Japanese teas.

Through my wife’s correspondence with them, I found out that we’re the first foreign buyers to deal with their company directly. What a special honor for me to show this to us in Canada. From my experience with Japanese tea over the years, I have found that as famous as Uji tea is — Shizuoka is better. I have extended family in Uji and although they don’t seem to know any tea farmers directly (as friends) they do have a strong opinion as to who is their favorite producer/company. I often get these teas as gifts when I go to Japan, they’re great BUT man would it be nice if they lived in Shizuoka instead!

Sad things:
In general, Japanese tea is not cultivated in the middle of the mountains because farming tea on flat land is much more cost-effective and viable, and thus most of Shizuoka’s tea is created in the Western plains of Hamamatsu, with its glorious full sun. In an area with full sun, tea will naturally develop bitterness. That makes unappealing sencha, to me.

But alas, we’re not living in the 1600s, and tea farming is not the ideal life for today’s youth who would rather live in a metropolitan city rather than amongst tea bushes in rural mountains. So no one knows this kind of thing anymore. Ashikubo Tea Works is a CO-OP of farmers about 50 strong who pool their land together with a mission to preserve the heritage of the Ashikubo name. In the entirety of the Ashikubo area, there is another farm with about 8 staff, and a few small family-run, local producers (basically husband-wife duos). 25 of the 50 staff working for Ashikubo Tea Works are over 70 years old, so in the coming years, things are going to change significantly for the area as a whole.

Guys, can we help save the Japanese tea industry or what? Buying these teas and spreading awareness is how we’ll do it. Thank you!