Zenkouen Tea Garden SZ001: 2023 Daichi no Meicha – Imperial Grade 極上 Shizuoka Sencha (JAS Organic) Zenkouen Tea Garden

Organic tea farmer Yoshimitsu Masuda’s best sencha, Daichi no Meicha 大地の命茶 (“Tea [made from] the life of the earth”), is a deep-steamed sencha or fukamushicha that produces a deep green tea with a rich umami flavor. The leaves for this level are picked while they are still very young in spring…while “shincha” or new tea is used broadly in the tea industry to mean any first flush tea that has just been harvested, Daichi no Meicha, Imperial Grade, is truly new leaf.

Product info

• Ingredients: Green tea
• Cultivar: Blend
• Harvest: Spring
• Region: Shimada, Shizuoka
• Steaming: Deep steamed (fukamushicha)

Farmer Info

Yoshimitsu Masuda spent the first part of his adult life working in a major farming cooperative where he learned firsthand about the danger of food additives and pesticides. Returning to the family tea farm in 1992 to learn tea making from his father and fellow tea farmers in Shimada, Shizuoka, he was deeply surprised at the amount of pesticides used in tea farming.

Switching to organic farming was not an easy task; insects and disease plagued the first field he was given charge of, crop yield and leaf quality dropped, and he faced criticism from both family and other tea professionals. But he felt it was important to create tea that was safe for his own family to drink first. (Read more about Masuda-san’s story here.)

Today, built upon 25+ years of organic farming experience, Masuda-san produces tea that he is proud to call both safe and delicious and is passing his tea-making skills on to his children.