Kamikatsu Awabancha | Wild growth | 2024

上勝　阿波晩茶

Kamikatsu Awabancha is a traditional lacto-fermented tea from the village of Kamikatsu in Tokushima, on the island of Shikoku.

The tea leaves are hand-picked in the midst of the humid Japanese summer from wild tea trees growing on the mountainsides surrounding Kamikatsu. Following the first initial processing steps, the tea leaves are fermented in barrels — in our case, for 28 days — and subsequently dried in the late summer sun.

The result is a unique Japanese tea in which the fermentation may seem at first somewhat ‘funky’. However, these finely preserved summer leaves offer exceptionally pleasant and comforting brews, characterized by both bright floral notes and a soft, natural sweetness — naturally low in caffeine and without any sense of bitterness, even when brewed with boiling water.

sun-dried figs – fennel seeds – chrysanthemum blossoms