Marimo Sencha (organic)

Information about the organic tea garden of the Hayashi family in Mie prefecture

With the train from Nagoya in the direction to the Pacific Ocean it takes about one and a half hours to get to the Hayashis' organic green tea garden. It is located in Mie Prefecture, not far away from the coast of the Pacific Ocean.

Iwao Hayashi is one of the precursors of the organic movement, who followed his own ideals, and changed the production of his own tea garden away from conventional production to organic production at the end of the seventies. Other tea gardens, for example our tea garden in Uji and also Morimoto Family, know him well as an expert for natural ways to handle with vermins - a basic topic in organic tea production.

Shortly after the introduction of the Japanese organic certification system "yuki-JAS", Mr. Hayashi got in contact with the well know certification body "JONA", which cares for the certification process of the tea garden and production. Since June 2010, the whole garden and production of Hayashi Family is certified according to the EU organic standard.

The Teas of Hayashi Family show up with a typical characteristic: They are "chuu-mushi". "Fukamushi" means "deep steam", which explains that the hot steam, which stops the fermentation process, is in contact for a longer time with the tea leaves than usual Japanese green tea, calles "asamushi". "chuu-mushi", the style of Hayashi Families' teas, is in between both categories.

The longer the freshly harvested tea leaves are to be steamed, the more tea leaf structur is to be opened. This has basically two effects. On the one hand the needles form of the leaves is more fragile, which means that more leaves break and therefore more shorter "needles" are to be found. On the other hand, the infusion is characetrized by a very intensive green color, and the brewing time is very short. Even less than one minutes is enough to get a beautiful infusion.

The taste is fesh and smooth, intensive but not bitter. But these are not the only convincing characteristics of the Hayashis' teas. A further convincing point is for sure the spirit of the precursor Iwao Hayashi, who now is already at the end of his eighties, and still stands up for the organic movement.