Maker Spotlight: The Nishi Family

The Nishi family is celebrated throughout Japan for their exquisite quality teas and recognized for their dedication to organic tea farming. Our partners since 2005, the Nishi family are truly the pioneers of organic tea cultivation in Japan and are one of the most successful, high-quality organic tea producers in the world.

The Nishi family has built up one of the largest networks of organic farms in Kyushu Island with many gardens atop Mt. Kirishima, an active volcano near Kagoshima. The gardens are secluded behind deep forests of Japanese cedar and pine, which provide buffer zones that protect the tea gardens from industrial pollution. They also harvest top-quality, woods-grown shiitake mushrooms, in the forests between the tea gardens during the off-season. When we stay with the Nishi family during the tea seasons, we can see and taste how connected this family is with the land.

Every year, the Nishi family produces a special batch of hand-picked shincha honoring the first growth, new tea of spring as the tea bushes emerge from winter dormancy. Shincha is fresh and vibrant while being widely celebrated and anticipated by tea lovers. The Nishi family's dedication to hand-harvesting places this tea among Japan's most exclusive offerings, as less than 2% of Japanese tea is selected this way.

Toshimi-san, the eldest son of the Nishi family, leads production and all aspects of the tea farming. He is supported by his two younger brothers and his mom. His whole family has a hand in tea production. Toshimi-san is a third-generation tea farmer and an ingenious organic tea maker—the son of Japan’s organic tea farming pioneer who died tragically and unexpectedly in a farming accident.

Toshimi-san and his brothers came together with the strength and experience their father imparted into the family and continue to create some of the best organic teas one can find. There are more than 15 different cultivars grown by the Nishi Family, along with several other cultivars specific to tencha used in the organic matcha industry.

Rishi and the Nishi Family have a truly collaborative spirit fostered over nearly two decades of tasting and sharing tea ideas together. We see this collaboration in our Kirishima Blend, a single-origin matcha that highlights the regional character of Kirishima Mountain. Kirishima Blend is a collaboration project started in 2005 between the founder of Rishi Tea & Botanicals and the Nishi Family tea farm.

Our partnership and friendship with the Nishi Family gives us special access to the best micro-lots of matcha and tencha that their gardens produce each season.

Every year, we taste the range of individual cultivar lots of tencha in the leaf form. We also test-mill batches of individual lots to assess their position in our blends or single cultivar offerings of matcha. We taste to understand the unique performance of each cultivar, which varies from season to season. We then assemble and taste trials of cultivar blends to create the harmony and balance of umami, density, briskness, bittersweetness and aroma point. The cultivar components of our Kirishima Blend change from season to season, based on the subtle taste profile changes we sense in each cultivar every year. Tea is dynamic so we must be flexible to taste and blend each year to make the Kirishima Blend the best-in-class representation of matcha from Kirishima Mountain. We follow a similar pattern for our organic sencha blends and single cultivar offerings. Each year we taste a lot and indicate the final roasting and level if Hika or what teas to blend and not to blend. Each year is an exciting time to taste and explore the teas that nature provides.

Toshimi-san is a true master of compost development and soil management. Organic farming is all about soil management with 100% natural inputs and techniques. Organic is much more than doing nothing to the land or practicing non-interventionist farming. Green tea—and especially deep green, umami-rich teas—require nitrogen and rich, nutritious soil.

In the forest, the Nishi family cultivates shiitake mushrooms on logs that are specifically arranged for this purpose. Every few years, the logs are rotated out, chopped into smaller pieces, and added to the compost along with horse dung, mountain soil, sun-dried thatch, and ground-up bamboo. This blend enriches bacteriological activity and primes the compost to fertilize the tea gardens.

When creating compost piles, they must sit and ferment for three years before being used in the fields. Sometimes the beneficial bacteria in the soil are so ripe and active that you can see the surface bubble with bacteriological activity foam.

Our founder, Joshua, is quite honored to spend time with Toshimi-san nearly every year. The teas we receive from Nishi-san are incredible, and the Nishi farm cultivates a wide range of tea varieties to choose from.

Each cultivar grown by the Nishi Family has its own schedule for peak quality harvesting—some teas flush early, while others come later. Toshimi-san can apply various levels of withering and steaming and can adjust the final aroma with different degrees of roasting, depending on what Joshua requests.

The key is knowing how and when to order teas from our partners, as there is no set menu or guide. We are fortunate to be at origin with our good friends, the Nishi Family, to select and source truly exceptional tea.