Kirishima Tea from Shutaro Hayashi

Shutaro Hayashi belongs to the fifth generation of the Hayashi family. In the team together with his brother, his father and his uncle, Shutaro is running the family’s tea garden, which was founded around 1897 by Shutaro’s great-great-grandfather. Since the foundation at the end of 19th century, the Kirishima tea garden is located on top of a plateau at the foot of the Kirishima mountains. 120 years after the foundation, Shutaro’s father entrusted the official guidance of the organic tea garden and the tea factory to his son Shutaro in the year 2017.

Shutaro’s organic tea production

Shutaro Hayashi is used to the organic tea production since his childhood. After his high school time, he decided not to go back directly to the family’s tea business, but first to study. Finally, a quite short time after graduating in tea studies (the focus of his agricultural sciences degree), Shutaro Hayashi returned to his family’s company.

Before Shutaro’s father handed over the official guidance of Hayashi family’s tea garden to his son, Shutaro first became the person in charge of a range of certain teas. The cultivation, harvest and processing of these teas were strongly influences by Shutaro Hayashi’s taste preferences. One of these sorts is the Kirishima Tennen Gyokuro from the tea bush cultivar Asatsuyu, which in the meantime became a well noted tea in some of the best specialized tea shops even outside of Japan.

Developing the Kirishima tea garden

Shutaro Hayashi puts his time and all his energy into the Kirishima tea garden, and into developing it step by step. This does not only mean that he is always looking around in the best terrains of Kirishima to find little new tea garden parcels step by step. It also means, that Shutaro is finding and establishing new sorts of tea bush varieties for his already existing organic tea gardens parcels. These new tea bush varieties bring new taste notes, colors, fragrances, and open new possibilities of combining them in new and different ways.

For Shutaro’s most favorite tastes, not only the harvest and production have to be done following very elaborated rules. Even before harvest and production, the basis for the very high quality of his teas is decided by a special way of organic fertilization of his tea garden’s parcels. This takes a lot of time and energy, while it guarantees the high qualities of teas, for which Shutaro is already known outside of Japan.