Qiandao Matcha Project is the source of our certified organic project matcha.
Hugo Tea's Chinese liaison, Jingyong Yang, is a shareholder in the farm, which is Japanese-owned. The farm was founded to turn out truly exceptional matcha in the old Japanese style according to traditional cultivation, shading, and milling methods. The surrounding geography is pristine. The farm is situated on the banks of a carefully protected reservoir, far away from large cities and industrial pollution.
Most Japanese matcha is blended from multiple farms and finished at regional production factories. But like our Japanese matcha, QIANDAO is a "one-farm" production, traceable down to the row of tea bushes in a particular lot. Feng Shu Ling's tea is clean, with a sweet, mineral-rich profile best suited to usucha or matcha lattes.
Matcha should be clean and, when possible, certified organic. Unlike steeped leaf tea, matcha leaves are consumed wholly and directly—making cleanliness and food safety paramount. Qiandao Matcha Project is tested seasonally for pollutants, heavy metals, and agricultural chemicals—and we visit annually to monitor and jointly innovate at this mecca of tea experimentation.
Wei Xie is fluent in both Japanese and Chinese, splitting his time between both countries in pursuit of the knowledge and techniques that produce exceptional matcha like ours.
He was hand-selected by the farm's Japanese ownership to manage Qiandao Matcha Project. He's young and quite ambitious—part of a newer, forward-thinking cohort of tea producers, using modern technology and management guidelines to run a tight ship.