What is aracha (荒茶)?

Most websites out there are calling it raw tea or crude tea (with all the endless connotations). More specifically, it is tea leaves after it comes out of the processing plant (at a farm or near a farming region) and before it goes onto the commodity market for tea leaves. We’re calling it farmers’ tea.

What happens to the tea leaves after they are sold into the commodity market? Wholesale brokers often buy it from various farms and sell them together to tea companies. The tea companies may then take the leaves through a second processing to separate the leafy and stem portions of the leaf, sift and remove powder (particles, the fine hair on the leaf), and cutting to get leaves that are the same size.

After sorting, they may then combine various types of leaves to adjust the grade of their final product. For example, if they are selling a medium grade tea, then they take low grade and high grade tea leaves, and combine them to create the right product for the retail market.

Although we only really know what happens in the Japanese market, something similar probably happens around the world in other regional tea industries as well as the coffee industry. So in the end, your tea may come from a specific region, but it may come from different farms in the region, different fields, and different harvest periods.
Not that this is a bad thing, it’s just how the industry works.

Finally, many tea retailers, as part of creating their own sencha flavor profile, often do a second drying of the tea leaves removing even further moisture from the leaves.

Since Obubu skips most of the distribution process by selling directly, all of Obubu’s teas are aracha–unblended, originating in the same field, harvested at the same time. In other words, the “single malt” of tea. Our president and founder Akihiro Kita was inspired to become a tea farmer by drinking aracha—falling in love with the richness of the entire leaf—and we hope you will fall in love too!