The shincha harvest at the Kadota organic tea garden in Miyazaki takes place quite early, since Miyazaki Prefecture is located in the south of Japan, on the island Kyushu. Compared to the harvest of Keita and Mankichi Watanabe on the small island Yakushima, the harvest is a little later, because Yakushima is located even more in the south. The shincha harvest at the Kadota organic tea garden also takes place a short time after the harvest at Haruyo and Shigeru Morimoto’s organic tea garden. This timing is due to the location of the tea garden from which the Kadotas pick the leaves for their shincha. The tea garden is situated on a little hill called “Arasaki”.
In general, the Kadota tea farm is very small and really old machines are used. This is why they do many things by hand. To produce old-school kamairicha is a lot of work. This is one reason why today only less than 1% of all Japanese tea gardens produce kamairicha.
Therefore, kamairicha is a very rare tea in Japan, and organic kamairicha can be called “super rare”. Thus, receiving an organic kamairicha shincha is a real treasure, since it is hardly ever produced.
For their shincha, the Kadotas use a very soft final heating. At the same time is has some (very, very tender) roasted notes, because it is a kamairicha – a tea produced in a machine that is basically an iron pan (first production step). Thus, compared to usual kamairicha from other producers, the kamairicha from Kadota has very few of these notes. Especially the kamairicha shincha is characterized by a freshness and sweetness, while it gets its tender roundness from the very sophisticated kamairi-production by the Kadotas’ skillful hands.
A real treasure!