Watch this video to join me in Japan on the search for the small artisanal matcha producer, Nakai-san!
Nakai 2016 matcha is the very first of the vintage & terroir collection. It is the first vintage and "single-origin" matcha in France.
Order and try the Nakai 2016 matcha here:
The vintage & terroir collection is very special to me because it represents the love a farmer gives to his land and to his small production of matcha tea.
With this collection, my goal is to find small matcha tea producers who work on their unique terroir, and to introduce "single origin" matcha to the Kumiko community.
Nakai 2016 matcha is the first tea of the new vintage & terroir collection. It is the result of my quest for an alternative and a complement to organic premium matcha.
Because our organic premium Kumiko Matcha that you are probably used to buying is the best of premium and organic matcha tea: all harvests are done by hand and come from more than 200 farms on the island of Kyushu in southern Japan. That is why a "cellar master" (as with champagne) creates a blend so 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 his unique terroir, and to introduce him to the Kumiko community. This became a reality 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 it is vintage: meaning that each year its taste will change because the weather conditions and many other factors will change on Mr. Nakai's farm (Nakai-san for the Japanese).
Nakai-san has a very touching story about his organic farming, and I interviewed him to share this story with the Kumiko community.
It was his father who started growing tea plants to make matcha using "conventional" farming (which uses chemicals such as fertilizers and pesticides).
Nakai-san tells how his father fell ill because of these products, so he took over the plantation and decided to stop all chemicals overnight.
His harvest dropped by more than 50% because the soil was intoxicated and dependent on chemicals, and it took 12 years for the soil to gradually recover its normal state and for the harvests to reach their previous level.
Nakai-san says those years were very difficult financially and also socially. The farmers who had plots of land adjacent to his were furious because insects and weeds were spreading onto their land, and they mocked him for his low 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 across the mountain, which the other villagers did not want to look after because they are hard 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 4 meters of separation on each adjacent side to avoid contaminating his organic crop (in Japan, where space is rare and precious, this represents a lot of surface area).
Nakai 2016 matcha is certified by the Japanese organic agriculture certifications (JAS) but not by the European or French ones because Mr. Nakai is too small a producer to invest in these certifications, so I do not offer it as an organic matcha in France.
It is also a limited edition: once I have no more in stock there will be no restocking, 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 enjoy your Nakai 2016 matcha.
I plan to see Nakai-san again next year and I will pass on your comments to him. You can post them at the very bottom of this page.
