Obubu’s Blue Forest Tea Garden
青い森茶畑
In May 2021, Obubu Tea Farms announced that they had rescued a 1 hectare tea garden that lay secluded in a forest. The age of this tea garden, almost entirely surrounded by forest trees, turned out to be nearly as old as Obubu’s own tea fairy.
Obubu Tea Club members were invited to suggest names for this new garden. The field comprises the yabukita cultivar (1), the sayamakaori cultivar (2), as well as the okumidori cultivar (3). While a 2021 Kyobancha (See video below) has already been successfully developed and shipped to Tea Club members, Obubu are further developing this plot with a view to creating Gyokuro and Oolong Needles in the near future.
Camellia Sinensis var. Yabukita (bright green; registered as cultivar nr. 6 in 1953, an estimated 80% of all teas in Japan are nowadays made from cs var. yabukita)
Camellia Sinensis var. Sayamakaori (dark blue; sayamakaori was selected from cross-breeding yabukitas and can be harvested a few days earlier than yabukita)
Camellia Sinensis var. Okumidori (light blue; a hybrid between yabukita and a cultivar called ‘Shizuoka Zairai nr. 16′)
It is with great joy that I now read that Obubu have decided to combine two of the many entries they received until July. They decided to combine the suggestions of
Joshua (from Singapore) and myself
and the new field is going to be called
Aoi Mori No Chabatake (Blue Forest Tea Garden).
Both Joshua and I feel absolutely elated to have been chosen the winners. What is even more, we will have the honour to taste teas collected by various members in Aoi Mori No Chabatake. Because the garden is still at early stages of its development, it will also be most interesting to see (and regularly taste) it grow. This is sooooo exciting !
Thank you Obubu team, Obubu tea fairy, and gods of Japanese tea for rescuing such a lovely place and making tea dreams come true !
Update May 2022:
Aoi Mori no Chabatake, the Blue Forest Tea Garden, is now even larger ! The area planted with Yabukita has doubled in size, but the garden is still sensationally beautifully enclosed by forest.
The staff at Obubu have produced an initial batch of Aoi Mori no Chabatake cha, and I have had the pleasure of tasting five times the same tea from the same plant made by 5 different farming hands. You can read my analysis here: Blue Forest Tea Garden, the full scoop.
Update January 2024:
Here, Cameron, an intern at Obubu in Wazuka, Kyoto, is trying his hand(s) at hand-rolling Aoi Mori no Chabatake tea leaves into tea: From plant to tea leaf.
If you, the reader, would like to give it a try yourself, why not learn from the very best ? In November 2023, Akky-san (Co-founder and president of Obubu in Wazuka), together with Simona Suzuki (Formerly an intern at Obubu Wazuka and now president of the Global Japanese Tea Association) and Hosoi-san (of Hosoi Nouen Wazuka and national tea rolling champion 2018) came together to form Team Wazuka and won the 2023 National Tea Hand-rolling Competition: Click the link provided here if you would like to see the happy winners. In other words, this team of 3 is the best team of tea hand-rollers in the whole of Japan ! This is no mean feat !
This link here (Yes, here) will take you to an Obubu special hand-rolling workshop (Available dates are 1st August, 11th September and 4th December 2024) and this link here is for those interested in a Tea Picking & Rolling event (27th April and 13th June 2024) in the beautiful tea town of Wazuka.
