The owner of Mukasa-En, MUKASA Yasuyuki, is one of the most prominent tea farmers in Japan. His technique of tea cultivation and production is so sophisticated that tea farmers visit him to study his skills from many areas of Japan.

Mukasa-san organizes the private conference, named as “Mukasa-Kai”, periodically in order to improve and sophisticate the skills of tea cultivation and production. I heard his conference has been going on more than 15 years. This meeting has various participants in addition to his colleague. Tea farmers, experts in each specialty join the conference from all over Japan due to the charisma and master craftsmanship of Mukasa-san.

On 2th Feb., more than 20 people participated the meeting to evaluate their teas in each other, recieve a lecture for soil management and discuss various issues such as skills for tea cultivation and production, business management, trends of tea consumption and so on. The conference had various participants, tea farmers from 4 prefectures (Shizuoka, Kagoshima, Shiga, Miyazaki), advisers in mechanical companies and a fertilizer company, consultants for tea industry, prefectural officers.

The sensory evaluation was carried out as shown below.

Yasuhiro-san (a son of the owner of Mukasa-en) discussed with his colleague and various experts of tea.

Each participants checked the features of tea samples extensively.

The former trainers, Ijiri-san and Takeuchi-san presented their green teas and participants evaluated them. They had studied skills and minds of Mukasa-san for some years in Mukasa-En tea farm. Experts complimented the improvement in skills of the two.

Then, we compared some green teas to study effects of the specific compost on the flavor of green tea.

After the explanation of the purpose of this research and criteria of evaluation, experts and tea farmers tasted and checked flavor of each sample.

Apart from each preference, we tended to feel less “zatsumi*” in the tea from the special compost-applied garden.
*Zatsumi means roughness in taste. It is not unpleasant but ambiguous and cloudy. In a rare case, someone like “zatumi”. As for some teas, I prefer them due to their “zatsumi”, although I cannot express how nice such zatsumi because of their unclarity in flavor.

The motivation of this experiment is derived from an idea of Mr. Kinoshita, a professional of soil and fertilizer science. Based on a series of researches for tea plant physiology, we know most of nutrient translocate to new shoots from old leaves. In his idea, root elongation consumes nutrients in old leaves which can be translocated to new shoots

In the end of meeting this day, Mr. Kinoshita gave a lecture about his consideration that the inhabitation of root elongation before 1st flush season could remain the nutrients consumption, resulting in tea with more rich taste.

Mukasa-En will continue such researches to improve their skills of tea production and plantation management.

In the next chance, I’d like to introduce about the skill of tea cultivation of Mukasa-En with showing photos of the tea plantation.