Green tea
While many teas around the world are shaped by oxidation or pan-firing, Japanese green tea is defined primarily by steaming. This places taste at the centre of evaluation: umami, sweetness, astringency, texture, and finish.
At mirume, we look for a long, lingering finish: sweetness and umami that remain after the sip has gone.
mirume selects first-flush teas only, from yields below 400 kg per hectare. Younger shoots contain a higher concentration of umami and carry more of mirume-ka, the fresh aromatic signature of young leaves that fades as the plant matures.
Aging is part of mirume’s selection process. Each green tea is assessed for its optimal aging period. High-quality green teas selected by mirume are aged for at least one year before reaching the customer.
Tea should not be treated as a fresh vegetable. It is closer to wine. A structured wine is not at its best the day it is bottled, and high-quality tea is not always at its best the week it is picked.
This is not a new idea. In the traditional Japanese tea world, matcha has never been understood as a tea to drink immediately after harvest. Since the Edo period, the finest tencha leaves have been sealed in ceramic jars after the May harvest and aged until November, when the jars are opened in the kuchikiri ritual.
The tea world has long understood that aging can improve quality. mirume applies this principle beyond matcha, to the green teas it selects.
High-quality tea deepens with age. The finish lengthens. The aroma becomes more integrated. The texture becomes rounder. Caffeine dissipates gradually. The teas mirume selects have enough structure to reward aging. Not all teas do.
Hojicha
Most hojicha is made from lower-grade leaves, or from a mixture of leaves and stems.
mirume’s hojicha is made only from the stems of first-flush tea, roasted at very high temperatures using the traditional suna-iri method: sand roasting.
The result is an intense, sweet roasted aroma, with no bitterness and no astringency.
No decaffeination process.
No detectable caffeine in laboratory testing.
Achieved through first-flush stem selection and high-temperature roasting, not through chemical removal.
Japanese Black Tea & Semi-Oxidized Tea
Unlike Japanese green tea, where producer’s techniques play a defining role, Japanese black tea and Japanese Semi-oxidized(Oolong) tea are more shaped directly by nature.
What we mean is the cultivar (the variety of the tea plant) defines the aromatic potential, while the producer’s skills determines whether that potential is fully expressed or not.
mirume selects both.
We classify these teas by aroma profile, not by origin or cultivar name alone:
Sweet potato, Honey, Floral
However the same cultivar, handled by different producers, can create entirely different results.
The name alone is not enough. The aroma tells the truth.
