"Making tea to connect people, and soften their hearts."

This is the motto of the producers behind MATCHA SONOGI, a blended matcha from a cooperative of four tea farmers overlooking Ōmura Bay in Higashisonogi, Nagasaki prefecture, Japan. The matcha is one cultivar—yabukita, the gold standard in matcha production—but from four different lots of yabukita tea trees, all planted, tended, shaded, and harvested with the distinct styling of each farmer. Each shades their plants with nylon screens for 21 days before hachiju hachiya ("88 nights"; or, 88 days after the 1st day of spring), when the first flushes are machine-harvested and processed to tencha.

This lot both defies and embraces an old norm in matcha production—that matcha is made of tencha from multiple farms, then finished by a skilled producer (chashi—"tea blender") at regional tencha producing and milling factories. MATCHA SONOGI is indeed blended from multiple lots of tencha; but the farmers share a plot of land and produce their teas from start to finish on-site, collaborating on the cultivation, shading, harvest, and processing from planting to finished tea. The result is a single-cultivar, single-origin matcha born of the unique perspectives of 4 seasoned tea growers and the resident chashi.

Expect marine air, prominent sweetness, and round umami. 

This matcha is the most premium output of Shinya Fukuda (a soba-loving manga enthusiast), Yoshitaka Ohyama (a 7" LP collector), Kosuke Nakayama (a lifetime angler), and Kazuhiko Onoue (also a fisherman). Hugo is honored to showcase their combined mastery.

Notes — mizuna | anko | brothy

Vintage — harvested may '25 | milled and packaged monthly

Style — shaded 21 days, processed to tencha, milled to 10-12 microns

Cultivar — yabukita

Region — Higashisonogi, Nagasaki, Japan

Locale — Sonogi tea cooperative

Producer — [see above]

Nomenclature — Sonogi (彼杵)