Welcome to July at Obubu! Japanese summer has officially arrived after the rainy season, and we’re testing the limits of our air conditioners as we try to keep cool in 35°C heat every day. The rice field between our office and factory is growing lush and verdant, and the summer sunsets over the mountains give us stunning vistas every evening.
This month, we’ve wrapped up our summer tea production with sencha and wakoucha, and now our farming tasks focus on weeding and field maintenance after the rainy season. We’ve said farewell to our slot 2 interns, and slot 3 are settling in to their roles and developing their projects. It’s a quieter season on the tourism front, but we’ve been lucky enough to host some school groups too.
Meanwhile, we’re drinking gallons of cold brew tea every day to keep cool. Read on to see what else we’ve been up to this summer!
Hand-picking event
On July 18th, we hosted our summer hand-picking and hand-rolling event! This event is a chance for guests to not only try hand-picking their own tea in one of Obubu’s beautiful tea fields, but they also pan-fire and shape their own kamairicha (pan-fired green tea).
With our Slot 3 interns attending the event to guide guests in proper technique when picking, firing, and rolling the tea, we had a group of around 30 people. This meant we could split into teams to create four different batches of tea, with a comparative tasting at the end of the day. Participants were even able to take home a small bag of their freshly made tea!
Our next hand-picking and hand-rolling event takes place on the 22nd of September – you can still book to join us here!
Tea field landslide
This typhoon season was an especially difficult one for us. Wazuka saw a lot of rain this year, and extreme weather like this has consequences. Our tea field Somada had a significant landslide, and some of the small access roads to our tea fields have been damaged.
This kind of thing is impossible to predict in our world’s increasingly changeable weather systems. It’s a reminder that no matter how much tea we produce and how many people we welcome on our tours, we are still a small group of humans working with a changing, unpredictable landscape.
Whatever tea you are drinking now, its background probably has some story like this, too. So thank you for supporting small agricultural projects like ours! If you want to do more to support us at this key time, it’s a great moment to subscribe to our tea club, which helps us to in turn support the rest of the agricultural community in Wazuka, many of whom have been impacted just like us.
Slot 2 interns graduate
This month we said goodbye to our second group of interns for the year: Tomáš (#223, Slovakia), Leah (#224, USA), Jessica, (#225, USA), Jennifer (#226, USA), Flori (#227, Romania), Dhvani (#228, USA), and Madeline (#229, USA). They’ve featured in our newsletters and social media for the last few months, and now you can read about their Obubu experiences in their own words!
These interns arrived during the busiest time of year and accompanied us through the spring harvest season and the height of tourism – they’ve seen it all, and they’ve come out of the internship tea masters ready to take their skills and knowledge around the world. They’ve also left lasting marks on Obubu with a series of incredible projects, which you can read all about on our blog:
Awabancha making
Awabancha is a type of fermented tea traditionally made in Tokushima Prefecture, and many of us at Obubu love it for its tart, juicy, refreshing flavour. Its processing involves harvesting large branches, boiling tea leaves, and pressing them in barrels to ferment them. Some of our neighbours in Wazuka produce a small amount of this tea every summer, and some of our interns and Assistant Managers joined for the day to help with processing the tea!
This style of tea is not so common in the Kyoto area, and figuring out the processing together and tasting the result is an excellent way for us to get to know our local community better.
Hiro-san on holiday
Our co-founder Hiro-san took a holiday to the US this summer… or did he go on a tea tour abroad? Along the way, he met up with former Obubu interns for tea on the beach in sunny California. Reunions like these are a wonderful way for the Obubu community to stay connected, and for former interns from different Obubu eras to meet each other.
July favourites
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Zairai Matcha – 25g
¥3,000 -
Sencha of the Summer Sun (80g)
¥900
Zairai Matcha is a light, smooth matcha with a low umami start and a clean, astringent finish, featuring subtle structure notes of dark green leafs vegetables and walnuts, complemented by a long lasting impression on the palate. Perfect for those that prefer a lower umami expression with a bolder more intricate heritage matcha flavour.
Medium-light in body, Sencha of the Summer Sun has a light astringency with gentle kiwi undertones. The liquor is a bold brass yellow with an aroma of moist timber. The lingering aftertaste is floral and sharp. Grown in full sunshine and made from the summer harvest, Summer Sun is a bright July tea.
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