About Our Tea Plantation

Those who visit that tea plantation all gasp. The beautiful green belt that shines complexly expands below the bright blue sky.

This is the owner’s tea plantation. This tea plantation that is approximately 70 hectares and sends about 500 tons of organic tea out into the world ever year is located in Kirishima, Minamikyushu. The clear air, pure springs, abundant soil, deep mist and intense temperature difference make it the perfect land for cultivating delicious tea. However, a major difficulty blocked the path of organic tea cultivation.

Toshimitsu Nishi, the third generation of the tea factory, took over the family business after the sudden death of his father, who was known as a “fervent tea enthusiast”. However, he says that he did not inherit it but created a new company instead. Inheriting it and newly starting it were the same, but he took over the business for which his father planted 50,000 tea plants every year and continued to expand the tea plantation. When the owner was 10 years old, his father made an estimation while focusing on the future of running a business in the tea industry. He cleared the mountain and started to plant tea plants. Clearing the tea plantation was difficult in ways that are difficult to describe in simple terms, but despite the number of tea farmers decreasing from 70 to 10, the annual production output is increasing, thus producing results.

He started organic cultivation after creating the new company as well. He makes use of natural microorganisms to make his own compost that he ferments for about five years. It matures, so the compost is powdery and does not have the odor that I had imagined. The homemade compost is scattered onto the tea plantation along with organic fertilizer to nurture the tea plants. The water, which is indispensable in tea cultivation, is also groundwater that flows from the Kirishima Mountains, drawn and made into a reservoir that is controlled. As the cultivation is organic, each insect is removed manually. The organic cultivation of tea is truly a job that demands tenacity. While smiling cheerfully, the owner says, “they say that tea cultivation gives you free time for about half of the year, but there is actually so much that we need to do.”

The owner has been thinking about tea cultivation, planning, and implementing those plans for several decades. On the other hand, every day, he visits the tea plantation and does his best to provide tea to customers in the best state. It is effort that is spent over several years, every single day. The recognition of that initiative is silently spreading throughout the world as well. He intentionally does not put it into words. He just wants you to drink it. If you do that, you will surely find the answer in yourself.