MMC 01/24: Asahi (あさひ) Micro-Terroir Uji Matcha

Matcha Mill Club is our monthly Matcha membership, where we stone-mill a new single-origin Matcha and ship it out within 24 hours of milling every month. This article details the Matcha we shipped for January 2024!

New Year

To members of the Matcha Mill Club, あけましておめでとうございます – Happy New Year! We’re so excited for what’s to come in 2024, and Ooika hopes to be there alongside you keeping your palate engaged with Single-Origin, Fresh-Ground Matcha.

On Single Origin

Ooika’s passion for single-origin comes mostly from a Western perspective, as Japanese Matcha culture has traditionally been blended. There are many reasons for this, the chief among them is consistency.

Master Blending

Individual tea companies in Japan make blends to preserve the aroma, taste, texture, and finish from year to year. Doing this is an incredibly complex task that, similar to martial arts, has its own internal ranking system. One’s journey begins with a 1st dan certification, all the way to 10th.

Single Origin

While blends can be precious and harmonious, there’s a certain beauty in the chaos of single-origin products.

Every year, the new harvest introduces unexpected tastes, for better or worse. Westerners, unbound by the sometimes rigid expectations of Japanese culture, seem to have more interest in Single-Origin Matcha. Perhaps this is due to our history with single-origin wines, or coffees.

Transparency

When buying single-origin Matcha, the unspoken agreement with the vendor is those single-origin details will be revealed. With all the Matcha Ooika sells, we provide information that far exceeds any competitors on the market, going as precise as photos and videos of the farm itself, shading type, duration, and more.

This is important for us, as the joy of single-origin Matcha is developing sensitivities to individual regions, cultivars, and processing techniques. These are the skills that the Chashi (master blenders) at tea companies in Japan are trained to do.

All of this brings us to this month’s Matcha…

Asahi (あさひ) Micro-Terroir, Uji Matcha

Immediately, you’ll notice that there are no real sourcing details. We’ve been specifically asked by the farmer to not include precise details that may lead one to discover the name of the producer. As a result, we can only say this Matcha is from some micro terror within Uji.

This begs the question, why provide this Matcha to our customers if we lack the precision details we know our customers expect? The answer is this: it’s phenomenal Matcha.

While we can’t specify the name, we can say this: according to Shimizuさん, a 10th-generation farmer in Uji, there are currently 7 or 8 families in all of Uji that still practice Honzu shading. This is the ancient shading style that uses Rice straw and bamboo.

There are many advantages to this style of shading (such as cooler growing temperatures), but it comes at a literal cost. These natural materials cannot be re-used from year to year, and require significantly more labor to set up and maintain. A number we’ve heard is 8x the labor costs over synthetic shading materials.

In any event, this month’s Matcha was Honzu shaded and is one of those less-than-a-dozen that are still done. Ooika carries Matcha from many of these farmers, such as Sakata, Yamazaki, Tsuji, and Shimizu… so relatively few possibilities exist.

We hope you will enjoy this extraordinary Matcha as much as we did. We trust you will understand the farmer’s request for privacy!

Citrusy, sweet aroma. A gentle, calming green with good saturation and lighter tone. Stunningly rich and thick nori-forward Oi. Nori, nori, nori. 

Mouth-filling, expanding tannins that reach every nook of one's mouth, filling it with pristine oceanic, not unlike fresh-caught Uni. Decadent, rich, bold and self-assured. 

If one were to make the archetypical example of Ooika (the nori-like savoriness for exquisitely shaded teas), this Asahi cultivar would be it. Pointed, tannins around the edge of a bulbous, round, and fatty texture.

Long, lingering coating on the tongue - menthol on the lips, with spice in the throat. Complex, churning, and charming. Textbook. Well suited for the Japanese pallets.

Share your Experience

As always, your support of Ooika is greatly appreciated. Please share your own tasting notes and experiences with this month’s Matcha and tag us on Instagram @ooika.co or on YouTube here.

Sincerely,

Marc
Ooika’s Miller