Seikoen Tea Factory: Echigo Bocha, Roasted Stem Tea (Hojicha) with Toasted Rice 越後棒茶 Seikoen

Winner of the Monde Selection Silver Award (2009 & 2012), this award-winning but humble Echigo Bocha is a pleasant combination of bocha (stem tea), hojicha and genmaicha. To process this tea, the stalks from the tea were aged in Seikoen’s snow cooled warehouse (called a “yukimuro”) and then roasted over low heat. The mixed in toasted brown rice is regional, from Echigo and Joetsu of Niigata prefecture. ​An original product from Seikoen, please enjoy the aroma of the roasted tea mixed with the sweetness from their Koshihikari cultivar brown rice. This tea will bring you a sense of warmness, perfect for the autumn and winter months. Seikoen has also received compliments on this tea that it pairs wonderfully well with high quality chocolates! 

About Snow-aging

Seikoen’s snow cooled warehouse is like a big igloo which refrigerates products only with the cold air from the snow, without using any electricity (completely natural). The room is kept at 100% humidity and about 5 degrees Celsius for one entire year. While the mechanism needs more research, something about this unique aging process (perhaps due to the temperature which hovers just below zero in a state in which water is neither freezing nor liquid) causes the tea to increase multiple chemical components that make up the tea leaf’s umami flavor. Specifically, an increase was measured from 632 mg/100g to 810.7 mg/100g of 15 amino acids according to their tests. 

Product Info

• Ingredients: Green tea, toasted rice
• Cultivar: Tea – Blended. Rice – Koshi Hikari from Niigata.
• Region: Leaves from Shizuoka. Aged in Niigata, Japan.
• Packaging: Original, resealable bag for 85 gram size. Yunomi packaging for 20-gram sample size

Vendor Info

• Name: Seikoen Tea Factory
• Type: Tea Finishing Factory based in Northern Japan
• President: Yoshiyuki Matsuki
• Location: Ichinomiya 4-1-6 Itoigawa, Niigata 941-0056, Japan