From Kyoto to Your Cup: How Our Tea Is Roasted

The First Dawn: Dew on Uji’s Ridges

The journey of our hojicha begins in the pearl-grey hush before sunrise, when the hills that guard Uji are still draped in river mist and the bell of Byōdō-in has barely stopped ringing. From a narrow foot-path you can see scalloped terraces of Camellia sinensis cascading down the slope like tiled armour, every leaf lacquered with dew that scatters the first light into a million fractured stars. Pickers move among the rows with wicker kago baskets tied at their hips; straw sandals whisper against moss and the only other sound is the soft gasp each stem makes when it parts from the branch. A single pinch between my fingers releases a fragrance of sweet pea and cucumber rind, bright and green and utterly alive. In this breath-held moment the leaf is a syllable at the very start of a poem that will finish in a British teacup.

Mid-Morning Harvest Song

By nine o’clock the fog has burned away and shade-nets throw shifting mosaics of emerald light across the slopes. What was whisper becomes music—snip, twist, drop—until the hillside sounds like distant applause. Curious, I ask Tanaka Koichi, a seventh-generation tea master dressed in indigo samue, why the workers move so quickly now.

“A leaf is a humble metronome,” Tanaka-san answers, closing his shears around a shoot no bigger than a baby’s fingernail. “Pluck too early and the roast tastes thin; too late and the catechins stiffen into bitterness. We catch the moment the leaf smells of toasted sesame on the breath.”

He crushes a sprig between calloused palms and passes it beneath my nose. It smells of melon skin, young hay, and—deep below—an ember waiting for flame. Moments later the baskets are hoisted onto a mini-truck that rattles downhill toward the steaming barn; no second is allowed to slip away.

Steam and Silence

The barn feels more hot-spring than factory. Stainless drums hiss as jets of vapour envelop the morning’s pickings, locking chlorophyll in place before oxygen can steal the green. A perfume of sweet-corn, magnolia, and warm nori soaks the cedar rafters; condensation falls in heavy drops that pock the earthen floor. After exactly forty seconds the leaves tumble onto perforated belts where warm air flutters them dry—an audible rustle like rain on a thatched roof. Aya, the processing chief, fans the belts with a panel of bamboo to chase away errant heat.

“They’ll travel to the Ember Hall tonight,” she tells me, knotting a plum-coloured furoshiki around the first bundle. “The leaves must dream in motion. Rest brings sweetness, but stillness invites staleness.”

Her words hang inside the shimmering vapour, and for a heartbeat the barn seems less a building than a chrysalis made of steam.

Twilight Caravan to the Ember Hall

Dusk paints Kyoto in persimmon and copper as a refrigerated lorry hums along the Kamo River. Inside, the harvest breathes hay and faint caramel while a data logger holds the air at fifteen degrees. Neon signs blur past the wind-screen like falling stars; then, at the city’s edge, wooden gates the colour of oxidised iron swing open onto a courtyard lit by oil lamps. Tanaka’s roastery—nicknamed the Ember Hall—is a converted kura whose mud walls glow ember-orange beneath paper lanterns. The only ornament is a charcoal calligraphy that reads, simply, “火と葉—fire and leaf.”

Into the Glow of Iron Drums

The roasting room feels like a forge built for fragrance. Four iron drums, each the girth of a wine cask, rotate over cautious blue flames. Tanaka-san opens a hatch; a gust of humid vegetal aroma escapes, chased instantly by walnut shell and hearth smoke. Within ninety seconds the leaves darken—jade to olive, olive to chestnut—and tiny crackles pop like distant fireworks.

“Listen,” he smiles, cupping his ear toward the drum. “That is water making its exit. Next the grass bows out, sugar unravels, and finally smoke signs its name. The fire must dance, never devour.”

The air thickens with notes of barley syrup and campfire. Two minutes later he lifts a single leaf with bamboo chopsticks, cools it on his tongue, and gives a barely perceptible nod—the batch is good.

Cooling, Sorting & Grading

Fans the size of parasols coax residual heat away while apprentices stir the glowing leaves with cedar paddles. Each piece curls inward, edges crisp, surfaces lacquered with oil. Tanaka scoops a handful and shakes it beside his ear.

“Good hojicha sings,” he says. “A bright chime means perfection; a dull thud becomes latte powder.”

The brightest leaves earn the kaori grade—aroma supreme. They slip through a stainless funnel into twenty-kilogram aluminium pillows lined with oxygen absorbers. Seals hiss shut, lot numbers are branded, and cedar pallets wait in shadows for the road to the sea.

Night Road to Osaka Port

Just before midnight the truck glides toward Osaka Bay, hazard lights blinking golden Morse against tunnel tiles. Outside, the Kansai plain is a ribbon of ramen stalls, neon arcades, and rice paddies alive with frog chorus. Quayside flood-lights glare white as noon while cranes lift the pallets into a refrigerated container already half-filled with yuzu and fresh wasabi. A giant vessel thrums like a sleeping whale. When the container door seals shut, the scent of roasted chestnut steals a final breath of Kansai night and disappears into the hold.

Forty-Two Nights at Sea

For six weeks the hojicha rides seventeen-thousand kilometres of ocean. Inside its chilled chamber time slows; sensors record a faint respiration as the leaves settle like travellers adjusting blankets. Outside, typhoon waves slap the hull in the Philippine Sea, dolphins draft along the bow off Oman, and gulls circle the Strait of Gibraltar like pale comets. A junior engineer confesses he sneaks into the hold during breaks: “The smell hides engine oil and homesickness at once,” he laughs. Somewhere between the Red Sea and Biscay, the aroma softens from sharp smoke to velvet, as though the salt air has polished each molecule of flavour.

Customs & Carbon-Steel Countryside

Southampton’s cranes greet the cargo on a drizzling April dawn. HM Revenue inspectors unzip a foil pillow; toasted hazelnut floods the dock and clipboards hover mid-signature. Cleared at last, the pallet boards a curtain-sider and storms north up the M3 and M1, past fields yellow with rapeseed and villages that smell of wet stone. English spring is damper, earthier than Kyoto’s mountain crisp, yet the hojicha seems unfazed. In Northamptonshire the lorry reverses into a renovated textile mill—now a D2C warehouse whose floor still remembers the rhythm of looms.

First UK Cupping & First Orders

Tins—matte-black and silk-screened in copper—wait on a roller table like knights awaiting dubbing. Workers pour kaori-grade leaves; the sound is wind over dry grass. A label printer chirps: batch #001-UK. In the office corner a smartphone gimbal streams the scene to Shopify Live. Comments scroll—Smells amazing! “When can we buy?” I cue Tanaka via video; twelve hours ahead he stands before the Ember Hall’s glowing hearth.

“Remember,” he tells the viewers, “do not rush. Watch the steam—it is the mountain’s ghost. Smell first, sip second, speak last.”

I pour eighty-degree water over five grams. The liquor blooms mahogany, edging into russet as light refracts through the vapour. Flavours unfold: maple smoke, almond brittle, a flicker of yuzu zest. Comments burst into emoji confetti. A logistics clerk scans Order #1001; the first tin begins its smaller pilgrimage through couriers and letterboxes.

Closing Steam over a Northamptonshire Sunset

The shift ends, roller shutters descend, and forklifts whine into silence, yet the warehouse carries a lingering dusk of aroma—smoke, malt, maple, distant cedar—as though someone bottled Kyoto daylight and uncapped it here. I brew a final cup, tea the colour of violin varnish. On the palate: burnt toffee, river-stone minerality, a cooling menthol that startles a tired smile from my lips. Outside, swifts carve the apricot sky. I taste not only fire-kissed leaf but the laughter of Uji pickers, the sigh of iron drums, the hush of Atlantic starlight. Tomorrow, vans will fan out across Britain—Edinburgh to Exeter—bearing tins that pulse with the mountain’s quiet heartbeat. A leaf that once shivered under Japanese dawn will warm a British evening, and the poem that began in mist will end in steam.