Producer of this tea:

Country Friend Farm

国友農園

Country Friend Farm is a tea farm located in Ino, a beautiful town by the blue river Niyodo in the deep mountains of the central Kochi. This region is the home to Yamacha (山茶), the wild tea forests growing on the rocky slopes of the mountains. For centuries, the people of this region have made kamairicha from these wild tea plants. At Country Friend Farm, Ms. Akika Kunitomo and her team produce extraordinary fragrant kamairicha, passing on their tradition of Yamacha to date.

Living with the mother nature in the mountains.

山と共に生きるということ

In the current Japan, most of the field works have shifted from the human hands to the machines. However at the Yamacha gardens of Country Friend Farm, all works are still done by hand. Yamacha plants grow in the natural forest on the rocky mountain slopes, and they make sure that the plants grow with minimal human interventions. Unlike conventional farms, they only harvest the leaves once a year to keep the vigor of their tea plants. Finally, these natural tea leaves are pan-fired solely by hand, making their kamairicha especially fragrant and rich in flavors.

This is an enormous work, and with everything being done by hand, the amount of tea they can make is extremely limited. But the way they work reminds us an important thing that perhaps many of us have forgotten in the life of modern times: we are part of the nature, and the nature is also part of us.