Recently, I wrote about the unique history of Wazuka as it relates to tea. Now, I'd like to dive into what makes Wazuka so special, beyond its historical importance. At the end of the day, Wazuka is still the source for some of the best tea out of Japan, and this is because of its unique terroir, providing the perfect conditions for tea-growing. Let's take a deeper look!
Water, Temperature, and Mountains
Wazuka lies in the Uji Basin, to the south of Kyoto. I've referenced the role that fog plays in tea cultivation in previous emails. Beyond lending a sort of poetic ethereality to the aesthetic of it all, the cooler temperatures and limited light actually enhance tea quality. This is largely because these factors together combine to slow the maturation of the tea leaf, giving farmers time to shade and manipulate their tea leaves before they become too mature to produce quality tea. I referenced this previously here. (See, it's all tying together!).
As a result of these benefits of cool fog, a lot of high-quality tea gets grown in places that produce a lot of it. Wazuka is one of these places. The river that runs through it provides necessary moisture, while the mountains that wrap around it not only trap fog, but help create it by producing large differences in temperature throughout the valley.
Left Bank, Right Bank
These terms may be familiar to those of you who drink Bordeaux. Like Wazuka, that town is divided by a river, and both sides produce different variations of their chosen cash crop. Unlike Bordeaux, however, it is quite a bit harder for a Westerner to find information on the subtle differences between the banks. Here is what we do know for sure, though.
1. Wazuka warms up in spring from west to east. Typically, the east bank of the river is cooler for a few weeks longer than the west bank.
2. The east bank seems to be somewhat steeper, based on topographical data. Steeper cliffs typically produce higher-quality tea, as the plant roots have an easier time penetrating deeper layers of the soil when on an incline. They also produce larger temperature differentials across their slopes. That said, steeper hills are also more challenging to farm and do not lend themselves to automation.
To be clear, both sides of the river produce high-quality tea and are known for being dominated by small-scale farmers rather than large-scale industrial agriculture. However, cross-referencing our teas with the map of Wazuka, we can see that the vast majority of our tencha comes from the east side of town. There are a few that are grown on the west, but interestingly, these are all (so far) cultivars that are normally reserved for sencha production. It appears that the bulk of cultivars intended to be shaded are grown in the east, while the sun-exposed teas are mostly in the west. This makes sense, considering that the slower maturation process of cooler temperatures is helpful when a farmer needs to ensure they can fit 30 days of shading in before harvest.
You can see from the map above that the East side of town sits closer to the mountains than does the West side. You may also notice that the elevation gets pretty high to the south of town, with an additional river, the Kizu River, beyond those mountains. Then, there is the Koya Pass, which allows moisture from the Kizu river to drift into the Wazuka valley. I pay particular attention to this part of town because the majority of our tencha comes from here, in a region called Somada, which basically sits right on the Wazuka side of the Koya Pass.
Because this area is particularly steep, it can really only be worked by hand. This is why the tencha from this part of Wazuka can typically only be acquired in smaller batches (which can be a source of headaches when there's a matcha shortage!), and why it seems that Wazuka will continue to be a source for high-quality tea for years to come: it literally cannot accommodate anything but small-scale, passionate farmers.
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Hopefully this gives you a bit more appreciation for how special Wazuka is! One day I'll get out there and dig into the soils to see how their compositions are different from one area to the next...One can dream!
Thanks for reading and happy sipping,
Simon