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A steel scoop lifting bright green bulk matcha powder from a lined foil sack in a tea processing room

Hormuz and Your Cafe's Wholesale Matcha Costs

Doubling air freight adds about a cent per latte. Next spring's leaf costs far more. A cafe owner's plan for ordering, menu pricing and suppliers.

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Z1 Tea Cultivar: The Unnamed Line Behind Saeakari and Seimei

Z1 Tea Cultivar: The Unnamed Line Behind Saeakari and Seimei

Z1 is a Japanese tea breeding line that never got a name: a Tamamidori seedling, mother of Fuushun and Saeakari and grandmother of NARO's Seimei.

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Unkai Tea Cultivar: Kyushu's Sea-of-Clouds Kamairicha Plant

Unkai Tea Cultivar: Kyushu's Sea-of-Clouds Kamairicha Plant

Unkai is Cha Norin No. 29, a Miyazaki kamairicha tea cultivar registered in 1970 and named for a sea of clouds. Here is what its breeders' report shows.

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Terakawawase Tea Cultivar: Uji's Early Tencha Plant

Terakawawase Tea Cultivar: Uji's Early Tencha Plant

Terakawawase is an early Uji tea cultivar for tencha, registered in 1990 as Seed and Seedling Act No. 2092. What its record says, and where it grows now.

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Shunmei Tea Cultivar: The Early Sencha That Lost to Saemidori

Shunmei Tea Cultivar: The Early Sencha That Lost to Saemidori

Shunmei (Cha Norin No. 37, 1988) is an early Kanaya cultivar from Yutakamidori x F1NN8. A breeder rates it easier to grow than Saemidori, which overtook it.

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Ryoufuu Tea Cultivar: The Sencha Its Breeder Won't Oversell

Ryoufuu Tea Cultivar: The Sencha Its Breeder Won't Oversell

Ryoufuu (Cha Norin 45, 1997) is a Houryoku x Yabukita sencha cultivar from Kanaya: tougher, later and higher-yielding, with a flavour that splits tasters.

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Izumi Tea Cultivar: Japan's Export Green Tea Reborn as Black Tea

Izumi Tea Cultivar: Japan's Export Green Tea Reborn as Black Tea

Izumi (Cha Norin 24) is a 1960 Benihomare seedling bred for North African export green tea. It yielded twice Takachiho and now returns as black tea.

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Fujimidori: The 1962 Tea Cultivar That Is Still Unregistered

Fujimidori: The 1962 Tea Cultivar That Is Still Unregistered

Fujimidori is a Yabukita-bred Shizuoka sencha cultivar, named in 1962 as Shizu-7224 and still unregistered. Parent of Sawamizuka, vegetal and umami-rich.

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Terraced tea rows on a Shizuoka hillside with black shade netting rigged over the nearer field

The Yabukita Problem: How One Tea Plant Shaped Japan's Matcha Supply

One tea plant covers more than 60% of Japan's tea fields, and Japan's national agricultural research organization states plainly that it is unsuited to organic cultivation and unsuited to matcha. Its name is Yabukita. It was the right answer to...

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