原科製茶

Harashina Seicha

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原科製茶は、静岡市で煎茶の仕上げを手がける茶商です。扱うのは本山茶。安倍川の本流と、支流である藁科川の流域で生産されるお茶の総称で、静岡市のお茶はそのほとんどが浅蒸しです。私たちも浅蒸しを主軸に仕上げています。

今回お届けするのは、藁科川中流域の水見色という地区、単一の生産者が育てたお茶です。市場に並んだとき、その地区の中でひと目で「一番綺麗だ」と分かる仕事をされる方で、茶葉が針金のようにピンと縒りが効いています。相場より高くつく年でも、納得して出せる品質だからこそ、毎年専属のように買い続けています。

もうひとつの特徴は、煎茶の仕上げだけでなく、ほうじ茶の焙煎も自社で行っていることです。ほうじ茶は専門業者に委託する会社が多いなか、私たちは両方を自社で手がけています。

Harashina Seicha is a tea merchant in Shizuoka City specializing in the finishing of sencha. We work with Honyama tea — the collective name for tea grown along the Abe River and its tributary, the Warashina. Almost all tea from Shizuoka City is lightly steamed, and light steaming is what we build our work around.

The tea we're offering here comes from a single grower in Mizumiiro, in the middle reaches of the Warashina valley. When his tea appears at market, you can tell at a glance that it's the most beautiful in the district — the leaves are rolled so tightly they run straight, like wire. Some years his tea costs well above the going rate. We buy it anyway, every year, because it's a quality we can stand behind without compromise.

We're also unusual in roasting our own hojicha. Most companies send that work out to specialist roasters. We do both the sencha finishing and the roasting ourselves, in-house.

Firing Hard, on Purpose

We fire our tea more strongly than most. Bring it to your nose and the aroma is unmistakably intense. Do that with Yabukita, though, and the liquor turns yellow. So we use Saimidori — a cultivar bred from Yabukita and Asatsuyu, the latter known in Kagoshima for producing a deep, vivid green. Because Saimidori starts out so green, it holds its color even under a hard firing.

There's a reason we push the heat. Saimidori is extraordinarily rich in umami, but compared with Yabukita it carries very little bitterness or astringency. Brewed straightforwardly, it can come across as too clean — pleasant, but somehow lacking. Firing it hard adds a note of toastiness that gives the tea its footing.

The hojicha we're sending abroad is single origin. It isn't blended with leaf from any other day — just that one tea, from that one day, finished on its own.

To Tea Lovers Around the World

A Message from the Maker

Say Shizuoka and people picture two things: Mount Fuji, and tea. Working with something that defines a place carries a certain obligation. I want to do this properly, and I want to make good tea.

Right now the market is moving toward matcha and instant products, and fewer buyers are asking for leaf tea the way they used to. That's simply where things are. But leaf tea is what we know how to do, and there's a pride in that worth holding onto.

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