Organic Japanese tea represents roughly 1% of the tea produced in Japan, and is a rare treat. At Matabay, although limited in supply, we only offer organic tea picked in tea farms of Uji that are officially certified Organic by the Ministry of Agriculture , Forestry, and Fisheries of Japan.

  The reason we mention a “limited” supply, is because there are very few tea farms/plantations in Uji that specialize in organic tea and can claim they make their tea without any chemical fertilizers or pesticides.

A Tea Plantation for Gyokuro

  In order to produce a high grade organic Gyokuro, you need to be not only a master in farming tea, willing to put forth the extra effort required, and able to take the risks in doing so, your tea plantation must be located in the perfect location in where you are blessed by the environment, yet have a natural “buffer” or “barrier” between your farm and the non-organic farms.  Then, on top of that, you need to be blessed with the perfect weather condition.

 While regular Gyokuro is picked 2 to 3 times a year, in order to produce high quality organic tea, realistically speaking, you can only pick the leaves once.  Anything after that, due to the fact that you cannot use the fast acting non-organic fertilizers, the quality drops so much that it is hardly worth using for a beverage.  This is not to say that there are farmers who will go ahead and harvest their organic teas 3 times a year… but not in this case.  Our 0rganic Gyokuro only uses hand picked first flush leaves, and is very limited in supply.

Gyokuro Tea that is light, and sweet

This organic Gyokuro is light, sweet and mellow, the aroma is fresh, and is very elegant.  Although quite different from the non-organic Gyokuro, it is a flavor that reminds one of how tea tasted back when Gyokuro was first discovered.

 Because this tea is a delicate tea in where freshness matters, we have packaged it in a steel can with a specially designed lid to keep it extra fresh.

Amount: 80g

Container: Matabay Steel Container