Green Tea Forum

Oni · 2nd Degree Black Belt Joined: 15 Mar 2008 Posts: 187

I have read on certain sites that uji area has the best gyokuro, and there are special rare tea breeds such as gokoh, but than I read on wikipedia that yame won the 2007 tea fair with their gyokuro from 1 to 26th place, but I have visited sites and the teashop from hungary that sells tea from marukyu-komaen, I bought from hibiki-an, maiko, they all are in Uji region and they brag that their gyokuro tastes the best and they are the real home of gyokuro, by the way I have never tryied tea from yame, only uji and shizuoka.

Chip · Posted: Mar 15, 2008 4:20 pm Post subject:

Best can be a subjective term.

Uji I believe is the home of Gyokuro. Yame produces a lot of Gyokuro, I read around 50% of all the gyokuro produced in all Japan.

The Uji Gyokuro I have tried has been excellent and there tends to be a large selection available, such as O-Cha's.

I am hoping to try a Yame one very soon. There is not a lot of Yame Gyokuro that is easily accessable.

By the way, Oni, welcome to the forum!

Kevangogh · Forum God Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 904 Location: Japan

There is no one "best" place in Japan for any particular kind of green tea, you can only generalize. Yes, Uji has great green teas but I can tell you there are crappy green teas from Uji as well and some extremely fine green teas which come from Shizuoka and other areas which will hold up to any other. It all depends on the individual tea - I wouldn't be so focused so much on which area it comes from. Some shops are taking this too far I think.

Until a few years ago, much of the green tea labeled "Uji" was grown in other areas, and then shipped and processed in Uji to obtain the "Uji" label. A law was passed and now any bag marked "Uji" must contain at least 50% product which is actually grown there. Note - that's at least 50%, not 100%.

Another thing to keep in mind - there are shops online that only sell stuff they personally grow on their own farm. That has both its good and bad points. The good point is that if they are somewhat competent at what they do then you can get a halfway decent, above average product for a cheaper price. The bad point is that they can only offer such pricing on the product which they personally grow and if they go outside of this then they have no longer have a pricing advantage. To obtain "the best", in my opinion, means not being restricted to one operation because no one operation makes the best of everything. Just because someone grows something on their own farm does not make it the "best", even if they happen to be from Uji or wherever.

The best green tea comes from where you happen to find it - my advise is not to get too hung up on exactly which prefecture/area it comes from.

syntheticpanda · 2nd Degree Black Belt Joined: 07 Nov 2006 Posts: 198

It's similar to wine, in a way. Sure, France is the motherland of great wine, but that does not mean there are not bad French wines; nor does it mean there are not spectacular wines from, say, California (okay fatalitea, Oregon too Very Happy

).

Terroir and climate certainly can make a difference, but I would say the effects of these factors are outweighed by the amount of difference that experience on the part of the farmers/producers/blenders can make. Just my 2 cents, though.

Kevangogh · Forum God Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 904 Location: Japan

Perfect example....

Oni · 2nd Degree Black Belt Joined: 15 Mar 2008 Posts: 187

It will take a lot of exploring and ordering from the web to experience and beeing able to tell the diffrence and form our own opinion, in europe there are very few teashops that have genuine japanese green tea and even fever that have tea from diffrent areas of japan, the next year or after, with a few friends we are going to visit japan for a month, perhaps that will solve some of the mysteries.

olivierco · Brown Belt Joined: 01 May 2007 Posts: 67 Location: France