Dosenbo – one of Kyoto’s sites for fine tea production and generally known only by true aficionados. Green tea produced at Dosenbo is completely organic and cultivated without any chemicals, a rare feat even in Japan. The resulting crop is a top-quality sencha tea with a smooth and gentle taste – and offering the peace of mind to make it a healthful everyday staple.

In general, producing organic green tea that still retains sufficient umami-producing components is difficult, so teas produced in this manner tend to be thinner. The green tea offered here, however, is the fruit of one producer’s thirty-plus year experience with organic cultivation: the finished product is a top-grade sencha tea grown entirely organically.

It is certified organic in both Japan and the USA. This green tea has already become an instant favorite among tea connoisseurs.

Thirty kilometers southeast of Uji, the home of Kyoto’s choicest teas, is Dosenbo. Located in Minami-yamashiro, one of Kyoto’s key tea-growing districts, Dosenbo lies on tablelands on average 500 meters above sea level, an elevation considered ideal for green tea cultivation. Green tea cultivation here began in the Meiji period on reclaimed land devoted to agricultural purposes; today, the high quality of Dosenbo’s sencha crop is widely recognized by green tea experts.

Yabukita is a cultivar bred from carefully selected native Japanese green tea strains. This superb varietal accounts for close to 75% of Japanese green tea production. Noted for its rich, deep umami, modest balance of bitterness and astringency, and elegant aroma.

Ordinarily, top-grade green tea is cultivated by pruning the stems to adjust the thickness of the bush and yield leaves of greater quality. Organic farming, however, is highly susceptible to slight changes in the climate and environs, which threatens to cause greater variation among a single harvest.

Accounting for this risk and retaining high quality leaves has been achieved here by using volume planting and letting the bushes grow without pruning. Although these denser bushes produce thinner leaves, they simultaneously offer greater opportunity to harvest more quality crop and hedge against the aforementioned variation. By building some loss into the harvest, the plantation successfully achieves organic green tea that remains high quality.

Even today, the “shikikusa” technique is used to keep the soil fertile. Grasses inhabiting nearby hills and fields are collected and matted into a groundcover placed between rows of the plantation. This traditional technique requires an exceeding amount of effort and is generally avoided for that reason, but it is indispensable in the production of quality green tea: the soil bed retains heat and moisture and helps produce magnesium, a key component in green tea’s aroma.