Yame Sencha “Shinsui"

八女煎茶 “深翠”

Harvest
May 2025

Origin
Yame, Fukuoka

This sencha is made from hand picked leaves harvested in the very first picking of the season, when the tea plants are the most tender and vibrant. It is the highest grade of sencha from the producer, Kakuda, of Yame. 

It brews a stunning glowing, slightly opaque, lemon coloured liquor. By the second infusion it looks exactly like Mountain Dew! This luminous glow translates to the palate as a beautiful mouthfeel: dense and suspended with sweet, bright green notes. 

The third infusion still glows an opaque yellowish-green, the leaves in the gaiwan look like steamed radish leaves now, and the mouthfeel remains gentle and unified. A bit more of its vegetal notes come forward in later infusions, reminding us of its nutritive and cleansing properties. This is quintessential sencha, perfectly balanced, and not too umami forward considering its terroir. 

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Kakuda Seicha of Yame, Fukuoka

The mountainous part of the Yame region is called Oku-Yame. Its elevation and inverted climate means it is prone to fog, which acts like a veil over the tea fields that grow there. This natural protection causes the tea plants to store nutrients in their leaves, eventually resulting in a tea rich in an umami flavor that can only be produced by the mountains.

Kakuda Seicha is a tea farming family in Kamyo-cho of Yame City in Fukuoka, in Oku-yame. Three generations previous to him, his ancestors built a small tea factory with the intention of producing genuine Oku-yame tea that reflects the virtues of this mountainous terroir. Kakuda’s relationship with this region, and the practice of farming and crafting tea there, runs very deep. 

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Brewing guide