In Shizuoka, Japan's leading tea-growing prefecture, a student circle at Shizuoka University is working to revive interest in a nearly forgotten style: zairai-cha, green tea made from heritage plants grown from seed rather than from the cloned cultivars that fill most gardens today.
The stakes are plain enough. Zairai-cha now accounts for only around 1% of the prefecture's tea gardens. The students are researching how it is made, building contacts with growers across several prefectures, and organising a heritage tea summit in Fuji on 22 September.
For anyone who drinks tea, the difference is more than historical. Seed-grown bushes are not genetically identical, so the leaf they produce is more varied and less predictable in the cup than a single-cultivar green tea — precisely the kind of character that tends to interest drinkers once they move from the teabag to whole leaf.
Source: Matcha Wire