The first artisan vintage matcha and "single-origin"

The vintage & terroir collection is very special to me because it represents the love that a farmer gives to his land and his small matcha tea production.

With this collection, my goal is to find small matcha tea producers who work on their unique terroir and help the Kumiko community discover now single-origin matcha.

Nakai 2016 matcha is the first tea in the new vintage & terroir collection. It is the result of my quest for an alternative and complement to organic premium matcha.

Our organic premium Kumiko Matcha, which you are probably used to buying, is the very best in premium matcha tea: all harvests are done by hand and come from more than 200 farms on the island of Kyushu in southern Japan. A "tea master" (as with champagne) blends the tea to ensure that the taste and quality of this exceptional product remain consistent every year.

With the vintage and terroir collection, my goal was to find a small organic matcha tea producer who works on their unique terroir and help them discover Kumiko. This came to fruition during my trip to Japan in June 2016.

Nakai 2016 matcha comes from a single terroir (a valley with a few small mountains called Wazuka, a few hours from Kyoto) and is vintage: this means that its taste will change every year as weather conditions and many other factors change on Mr. Nakai's farm (Nakai-san for the Japanese).

Nakai-san has a very touching story about his organic farming practices, and I interviewed him to share this story with the Kumiko community.

It was her father who started growing tea plants to make matcha tea using "conventional" farming methods (which use products such as fertilizers and pesticides).

Nakai-san says that his father fell ill because of these products, so he took over the plantation and decided to stop using all chemicals overnight.

His harvest fell by more than 50% because the soil was poisoned and dependent on chemicals, and it took 12 years for the soil to gradually return to its normal state and for harvests to reach their previous levels.

Nakai-san says that those years were very difficult financially and socially. The farmers who owned plots of land adjacent to his were furious because insects and weeds were spreading to their land, and they mocked him for his poor harvests.

Now, 20 years later, his land has grown from 2 hectares to more than 20 hectares, most of which are dozens of small, isolated plots scattered throughout the mountains that other villagers did not want to take care of because they were difficult to access. For Nakai-san, this is an advantage because if he has land adjacent to a plantation that is not organic, he must leave a 4-metre separation on each adjacent side so as not to contaminate his organic crop (in Japan, where space is scarce and precious, this represents a lot of surface area).

Nakai 2016 matcha is certified organic by Japanese agricultural standards (JAS) but not by European or French standards, as Mr. Nakai is too small a producer to invest in these certifications. Therefore, I do not offer it as organic matcha in France.

This is also a limited edition, once I run out of stock there will be no renewal, but maybe a Nakai 2017 in twelve months...

Watch the video above where I interview Nakai-san and think of him and his family when you are enjoying your Nakai 2016 matcha.

I plan to meet with Nakai-san again next year and will pass on your comments to him. You can post them at the bottom of this page.