Top-grade shaded green tea — bushes covered 20+ days before harvest, brewed at 60°C for two minutes.
Yamamotoyama, founded 1690 in Edo, produced the first gyokuro in 1835 at Kinoshita Kichizaemon's tea facility in Ogura village, Uji when sixth-generation Yamamoto Kahei hand-stirred the steamed shaded leaves, which dried into small rounded pellets (the dew-like clarity giving the name gyokuro). Uji's Ogura district remains the historic origin; Yame in Fukuoka is the modern volume leader.
Tsuji Riichi at Tsujiriichi Honten in Uji blends single-origin gyokuro from named villages — one tin from his Ogura plot brewed five times costs around 30,000 yen at retail.
Pale jade liquor, almost soup-thick on the tongue. Pure umami — kombu broth, sweet seaweed, raw soybean — with no astringency and a long sweet aftertaste. The leaf at the bottom is eaten with a few drops of citrus soy.
20+ days of shade-cloth or rice-straw cover (honzu method) starves the bush of sunlight, doubling theanine (sweet umami amino acid) and crashing catechin synthesis. 60°C water extracts theanine without releasing astringent catechins.
Variations
Uji honzu (rice-straw cover) is the protected old method, used by Horii Shichimeien. Yame in Fukuoka uses synthetic cloth and dominates competition wins. Asahi and Gokou cultivars push the deepest umami; Yabukita is lighter.
On the Palate
Where Gyokuro sits in the Japanese flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 1How it's made
4 steps · 1 min active + 6 min waiting
- 13 min
Cool boiled water to 60 °C (very low for gyokuro).
Watch outCool the water all the way to 60°C — this low is deliberate; any hotter pulls out catechins and the sweet umami of gyokuro turns to astringency.
- 21 min
Add 5 g gyokuro per 100 ml in a small kyusu.
- 32 min
Steep 2 min; do not rush.
Watch outSteep the full two minutes without rushing, then pour off to the very last drop — leftover liquor in the pot stews the next infusion bitter.
- 41 min
Pour out to last drop; sip slowly — second infusion at 70 °C, 30 sec.
