Kukicha
Kukicha
The stem rather than the leaf, sorted out of an asamushi sencha as it is refined in Shizuoka. Steamed, never roasted. Soft, green and quietly sweet.
From the gardens of Shizuoka.
Kukicha is what Japanese households drink every day. It is made from the stems, twigs and stalks of the plant rather than the leaf, and it behaves differently for it. Where sencha gives bright vegetal grass and matcha gives concentrated umami, kukicha gives mild sweetness, hay, and a clean mineral body. The cup is pale gold, the register is gentle, and the caffeine is barely there.
Ours comes from the refining of an asamushi sencha, the light-steamed style, in Shizuoka. When that sencha is graded, the stems are separated out, and those stems are the tea. They carry more theanine and less caffeine than the leaf does, which is what gives the cup its sweetness and its calm. We take it as a deliberate product, not as a by-product of something else.
Stems, twigs, and the cup that comes from the side.
Almost everything sold as green tea is leaf. This is the stem, lifted out of an asamushi sencha while it is being refined and kept instead of swept aside. Stem holds more of the amino acid that lands on the palate as sweetness, and less of the caffeine that gives leaf its edge, so the cup comes out soft and faintly sweet with none of the grip. It carries the least caffeine of anything in the house, which is why it survives the evening. Stems hold more theanine and less caffeine than the leaves do. Twigs add a soft mineral note. The combination produces a cup that's lighter, sweeter, and dramatically lower in caffeine than the leaf tea it came from.
We work with a Shizuoka producer who treats the stem tea as a deliberate product rather than a by-product. The stems are hand-sorted, briefly steamed to halt oxidation, then gently dried and sealed. No roasting, no flavoring, no blending. The cup that arrives is exactly what stem tea from Shizuoka tastes like in spring.
Hay, light umami, sweet mineral. The quietest cup in the collection.
The colour is a pale gold, almost translucent. The aroma is the unmistakable kukicha nose. Fresh hay, mild grass, a hint of milky umami, and the soft underlying sweetness that distinguishes stem tea from leaf-only kukicha.
A tea for after dinner, for the conversation that has slowed down, or for the cup when nothing more demanding is wanted.
Cool water. Brief steep. The simplest tea in the collection.
Kukicha asks for nothing complicated. Cool water (the stems are delicate; boiling water scalds them), 60 to 90 seconds, and the cup is ready. The least temperamental tea in the lineup, and the most welcoming.
The Japanese tea you can drink at any hour.
Kukicha is the Japanese tea you can drink at any hour. The stem-and-twig composition gives it very low caffeine. Roughly 5 to 15mg per cup, less than a fifth of a black tea. Children drink it, the elderly drink it, and you can pour it after dinner without disturbing sleep. Japan calls it the household tea, and it earns the name.
Most kukicha sold in the West is leaf-only and machine-processed. The cup that arrives is thin, vegetal in an uninteresting way, and lacks the sweetness that defines the Shizuoka register. We chose Asamushi kukicha, the high-grade stem-and-twig material from Shizuoka sencha and high-grade sencha processing, because it's the most refined expression of the category. Stems carry residual sweetness from the shading process used to grow sencha, and that sweetness comes through cleanly in the cup.
Saint Graal sources from a single Shizuoka producer who hand-sorts the stem tea material and packages it within weeks of harvest. Steamed, gently dried, never roasted. The cup that arrives is exactly what stem tea from Shizuoka tastes like in spring. Light, sweet, mineral, and as quiet as tea gets.