Yamabuki Nadeshiko

Like no other tea you have tried. This delicious full-bodied brew is made using a similar fermentation process to shōchū. The complex malty flavor has hints of fig and an aroma reminiscent of toasted chestnuts with a lingering finish.

A truly unique tea. We love this tea but differ in our interpretations of the flavors. Bob tastes caramel apples while Paula gets more of the malty flavor of a smooth bock beer. We look forward to your reviews to see what you can pick out of this one of a kind treat.
Yamabuki Nadeshiko is a post-fermented tea made using black Koji mold (kuro-kōji, botanical name aspergillus awamori), which is also used to produce awamori, a distilled rice wine from Okinawa. Yabukita zairai (在来 conventional/seed-grown) tea cultivars harvested from Harunocho and Kakegawa, Shizuoka, are processed as green tea, then washed and re-steamed before being subjected to mold fermentation for four days. The product is steamed again to sterilize the tea, then dried and packaged.

The process is similar to how ripe or shou pu-erh tea is produced in China in that micro-organisms are intentionally introduced to the tea, but doesn’t use wet piling – this tea is produced in specially built fermenting cabinets – and uses a mold species that is unique to Japan. Despite the vague similarities in production, the resultant tea is very different from Chinese pu-erh in flavor.

This tea is quite economical in that it requires about a third as much tea leaf as usual for a brew, leading to a much lower cost-per-cup.