2025 December round up – Oh deer, oh deer edition
Summary
A tea farmer and educator wraps up 2025 with a reflective look at seasonal rest and professional development. The writer is pursuing formal training in Chinese tea and sake studies, exploring how concepts of terroir and regional identity might apply to Japanese tea production—a shift away from tea makers' traditional focus on perfection of technique alone. Plans for 2026 include a new project on regional food-tea connections, participation in traditional kioke barrel-making w…
Key points
- Emerging cultivar Kirari 31 gaining traction among farmers; some Wazuka fields now productive after years of planting.
- Terroir and regionality concepts—borrowed from wine and specialty coffee—entering Japanese tea discourse; challenges tra…
- 2026 focus: farmer documenting regional tea-food connections across prefectures; launching 'Food Where Tea Comes From' p…
- Kioke barrel revival and fermented tea experiments (awabancha, black tea, kancha) underway; kancha near extinction with…
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About this article
What they said
“do we dare?”
do we dare?
“tea is freedom, and constantly evolving…”
tea is freedom, and constantly evolving…
“Kancha is a sadly dying art, with some villages having only one producer left.”
Kancha is a sadly dying art, with some villages having only one producer left.
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