Get to know the people behind tea
Kiyosawa Tea Gardens
Kiyosawa Tea Gardens is a group of farms in Kiyosawa Village, Shizuoka, led by three women tea farmers—Yachiyo Sugiyama, Yukako Kajiyama, and Chizuko Konagai. Each brings decades of experience and her own approach to tea cultivation. Yachiyo, an eighth-generation tea farmer, carries on a family tradition of growing tea in the region.Yachiyo is an eighth-generation farmer. Her farm is in the mountains where morning mist rises from the rivers and forests, enveloping the tea buds. They carefully evaluate the tea by hand, often checking that the scent and flavour are just right. Chizuko never imagined she would become a tea farmer, but she married into a tea farming family and has now been farming for 33 years. When the tea buds are ready in the spring, they carefully pick and process their single-cultivar Yabukita teas, making sure that the inherent characteristics of the tea are at their best in the final product. Yukako has also been farming tea for 39 years. She focuses on making roasted tea that has both a great flavour and a delicious aroma. To achieve this, she uses her high-quality first-flush tea leaves to make the hojicha.