roasted nuts – lush green – balance

The gentle roast of fresh spring leaves give this Japanese tea its unique combination of green notes with nutty sweetness.

This spring hjicha is from the first flush of the year, made from the yabukita cultivar, and is only lightly roasted and very enjoyable – round and sweet, with grassy, nutty and treacle toffee notes. Named after the wild Japanese mountain pheasant that roams its tea fields.

We feel very honoured to be able to offer this tea to you, produced by Czech/Japanese couple Ale and Sachi Gallas. The pair grow and process tea at their tea garden, ‘Nengangcha’, in Gifu Prefecture at an altitude of 450-500 metres in a village which has been producing tea for over 400 years.

Nengancha translates to dreamed-of, desired or wished-for tea, fitting to the reinvigorating work Ale and Sachi are doing in this area where tea production has tended to close down, not open like in this case, in recent times.

Ale and Sachi do not use any chemicals in the production of their tea, which relies solely on the area’s favourable tea growing conditions for its excellent qualities: heavy mists, high rainfall and large temperature differences between day and night.

Their plantation is surrounded by forest on all sides, and the leaves for this tea come from their Gokacha plantation that lies a little lower than their main tea garden, at 300 metres. It is named after the ‘yamadori’ or mountain pheasant, a local species that roams the tea garden and its surroundings.

“I hope that our tea will appeal to you and will transport you for a while to the land of deep mountains and green forests, to the Eastern White River…” – Ale Gallas, Nengancha

50g

origin Gifu, Japan
altitude 300m
harvest Spring 2024
cultivarYabukita
processing very lightly roasted