Matcha "Yamekaze"

八女抹茶

Harvest
June 2025

Origin
Yame, Fukuoka

Filling an important gap in our collection, we are thrilled that we can now offer the rich, umami-forward characteristics we love about matcha from the Yame region at a price suited to daily drinking. The reason this matcha is more affordable than one like Yamabuki is not because it is crafted with any less integrity, but because it is made from second rather than first harvest leaves. We can expect a little bit more astringency for this reason, which makes it delicious blended with milk or lightly sweetened. 

Yamekaze whisks into a vibrant, fresh, pigment-dense green colour. It tastes nutty, like cashew and soy bean, and has a smooth mouthfeel with sweetness around the edges. This is a great quality matcha from Yame at a truly impressive value.

. . .

Yame, Fukuoka is a tea producing region famous for gyokuro 玉露 and matcha.  It is located on the southernmost Japanese island of Kyushu. The tea comes from what was once a small village named Hoshino, before it merged with neighbouring villages to form the city of Yame. Yame spans a mountainous area, with the Hoshino River flowing through it from East to West.

The land here is very fertile and, at a higher altitude, the air is continually moist and foggy. Tea trees grow steadily and slowly in these conditions, which gives both their tea’s sweetness and its savory, “umami” flavors depth and complexity.