• Common Product Name: CRAFT BREW TEA IMPERIAL EDITION YAME See our guide to Japanese tea.
• Volume: 720ml
• Origin: Yame, Fukuoka Prefecture
• Tea type: Gyokuro (shade-grown)
• Packaging: Wooden gift box
• Ingredients: Green tea (Yame gyokuro)
• Storage: Room temperature, away from direct sunlight
• Best Before: 1 year from production date
• Producer: CRAFT BREW TEA Studio (丸七製茶), Fujieda, Shizuoka

The question had been sitting with Marushichi Seicha's craftsmen for more than twenty years: what happens to the extraordinary tea leaves — too rare, too specific, too singular — that large-scale production simply cannot use?

The answer became CRAFT BREW TEA Studio, launched in 2021 in Fujieda, Shizuoka. A tea house with over 100 years of history, reinvented as a precision brewing workshop. The concept: brew tea the way musicians record music. Not improvised. Not approximate. Water quality, temperature, concentration, extraction time — all controlled to the decimal, so that what arrives at your table is exactly what the craftsman intended.

The Studio works exclusively with what it calls Single Origin: one cultivar, one farm, one harvest day. Not a season — a single day. The result is a tea as specific and unrepeatable as a vintage year.

Marushichi Seicha also farms its own gardens using the Nakajima Method (中嶋農法) — an approach that restores soil mineral balance rather than relying on chemical inputs, allowing the tea plant to express its full natural character from the ground up.

The IMPERIAL EDITION draws on Yame, Fukuoka — a mountain region that has been producing shade-grown gyokuro for over 600 years, and the source most sought by Japanese culinary establishments that treat tea with the same seriousness as wine.

Deep amber-green, almost golden in a wine glass. The aroma is immediate: seaweed, rain-wet earth, a thread of white peach. On the palate: thick with umami — the quality that Japanese tea masters call koku, the sensation of depth without heaviness. Long, clean finish with no bitterness. This is the tea that makes people stop mid-sip and reconsider what tea is.

Serve lightly chilled alongside aged Parmigiano-Reggiano, seared foie gras, or a bowl of white rice — any ingredient where umami is the point. As a meal closer, pour at room temperature in a wide glass after grilled seafood or wagyu. For a Sober Curious table: this is the bottle that replaces Champagne at a special dinner.