Recap: The Uji Trail

Both sessions sold out, and between them this was the largest Matcha Club we’ve run. Thanks to the Logan Inn for the room — it comfortably held the whole group and we hope to meet there more often!

“Matcha Club? Give the secret knock.” (there’s not really a secret knock)

The first half hour

Each session opened the way they usually do: a pot of cold-brew sencha and an open floor, with the questions people brought setting the agenda. Storage, oxidation, how to tell whether a matcha is any good — and many more great matcha topics.

One thread did carry through: it ran into cultivars and blending, which is where the main event picks up. So we moved on to the trail.

Through the streets of Uji

Jason took the room to Uji. Shop by shop. Matcha by matcha.

First stop: Yamamasa Koyamaen.

Uji sits just south of Kyoto and has been the center of Japanese tea for centuries. Its shops have been blending and grinding matcha for generations, many of them a few minutes’ walk from each other — which is the thing that makes it worth tasting them back to back. Same town and shared history, but the matcha powders they produce taste significantly different.

Five stops down the trail, with tea poured from four:

Yamamasa Koyamaen — farming since the early 1600s, in business since 1861. Same neighborhood and same surname as Marukyu, completely separate company.
Marukyu Koyamaen — making tea in Uji since the Genroku era, the late 1600s.
Tsujirihei Honten — founded 1860 by a 17-year-old who later perfected gyokuro, and the only one of the four with a proper café.
Horii Shichimeien — founded 1879, caretakers of Okunoyama, the last of Uji’s medieval tea gardens.

From the slides: what to know before you walk into each shop.

The fifth stop was Nakamura Tokichi — founded 1854, still in its original merchant house near Uji Station. We walked past it and didn’t pour it, which is its own kind of Uji problem: there is always one more shop.

Four houses, four different ideas about what matcha from the same square mile should taste like. That’s the whole argument for tasting them one after another instead of one at a time over four months: house style is easy to talk about and hard to believe until the bowls are side by side.

The matcha angels

And thanks to the matcha angels who turned up with cakes and snacks. Nobody asks them to. They keep doing it anyway, and every session is better for it.

Next one

Sunday, September 13 — and for the first time, we’re holding a Club session at a matcha shop! We’re partnering with El Jardin Taqueria to run Matcha: Four Ways in their space: four preparations tasted side by side, so the comparison is between methods rather than between farms. Thin against thick, sparkling against latte, plain against what people actually add at home. Join us!