Our story
Nothing blended. Nothing hurried.
Kohaku exists because of a disappointing cup of matcha. Not offensively bad — worse than that. It tasted of nothing in particular: vaguely grassy, vaguely bitter, entirely anonymous. It had cost a great deal and told us nothing about where it came from.
Origins
That bag turned out to be a blend, as most matcha sold outside Japan is. Leaf from several regions is combined to hold a flavour steady from one year to the next. It is a real craft, and there is nothing dishonest about it. But blending is designed to remove variation, and variation is the interesting part.
What followed was two years of unglamorous research: drinking a great deal of tea, writing down what we noticed, and slowly working out that the differences we kept returning to were differences of place. Kohaku started properly in 2023, with one garden and far too much inventory.
Sourcing
We work with four growers across Uji, Nishio and Yame, and we buy from named gardens rather than from a broker’s blend.
Shading is where matcha is decided. Three to four weeks before harvest the bushes are covered, cutting sunlight by as much as ninety percent. The plant responds by flooding its leaves with chlorophyll and amino acids, and that is where both the colour and the savoury depth come from. Shade too little and the tea is thin; shade too long and it goes flat.
Only the first harvest goes into what we sell. Later flushes are cheaper, coarser and more astringent — and they are what fills most tins on most shelves.
The gardens
Four gardens across three regions, every harvest kept separate. Poured side by side, they are not subtly different — and which one suits you tends to depend on the time of day more than anything else.
Uji, Kyoto
River fog settles in the valleys and acts as natural shade; the soil is heavy and mineral. Deep umami with a long vegetal sweetness and almost no edge. The flavour arrives slowly and stays.
Nishio, Aichi
Flat alluvial ground on the Yahagi river, which floods and enriches. Brighter and more forward than Uji — less of the low savoury depth, more immediate sweetness, a cleaner finish.
Yame, Fukuoka
Narrow mountain valleys with sharp swings between day and night temperature. Stressed plants concentrate, and this is the boldest of the three: mineral, structured, noticeably less sweet.
Milling
Matcha is ground between granite wheels turning slowly enough to produce thirty to forty grams in an hour. A single 100g bag is most of a working day.
The slowness is not ceremony. Friction makes heat, and heat destroys the volatile compounds that carry aroma. A fast mill produces powder of roughly the right colour that tastes of comparatively little. There is no shortcut here that survives tasting.
What we believe
Matcha is perishable in a way most people are never told. It begins losing aroma the moment it is milled, and once a bag is opened it has perhaps four to six weeks before the colour dulls and the sweetness goes with it.
So we buy in small quantities, hold little stock, and ship within weeks of harvest rather than months. We would rather sell out of something than sell it tired.
Some years a garden gives us a remarkable tea. Some years it gives us a merely good one. We could smooth that out by blending. We would rather tell you which year you are drinking.