Hoshino Seichaen - Ike no Shiro

🍃 Matcha Ike no Shiro (池の白)

• Origin: Hoshinomura, Yame, Fukuoka, Japan
• Producer: Hoshino Seichaen (Est. 1946)
• Ingredients: 100% Japanese green tea (matcha)

🌿 Tasting Profile

• Color: Bright, clear green with a lively liquor
• Aroma: High-toned and toasty — the signature fragrance of Hoshino matcha, more open and aromatic than Uji
• Flavor: Mellow umami carried on a deep roasted fragrance, finishing clean and refreshing rather than heavy
• Texture: Very fine, whisks readily into a soft even foam
• Character: The producer's flagship usucha, and their best-selling matcha. In Japan it is the tin brought out for tea gatherings, while their everyday grade is kept for practice.

🌸 Our Story

There is a pond in Hoshinomura called Aso-ike, on the slope of a hill called Ike-no-yama. A deity has been enshrined there for as long as anyone has kept count. It is that pond — quiet, half-hidden, familiar to everyone in the village — that gives this tea its name.

Hoshino Seichaen grow the leaf for Ike no Shiro under the same shading method the village uses for its famous gyokuro, and mill it on their own stones in their own factory. What comes out is a tea their tea master describes as one that "delights even the host who whisks it" — meaning the fragrance rises before the guest ever lifts the bowl.

If you have only ever tasted Uji matcha, this is the bowl that shows you the other side of Japan. Toastier. Brighter in the nose. And, for many people who arrive convinced that matcha is a bitter drink, quietly persuasive that it never had to be.

☕ Enjoy it

Prepared as usucha, whisked with water just off the boil. Best with a simple wagashi, or on its own in the morning when the aroma has your full attention. Sift before whisking.

🏯 About Hoshino Seichaen

Founded in 1946 in Hoshinomura — the "star village" of Oku-Yame, Fukuoka — Hoshino Seichaen grows, processes, stone-mills and sells its tea entirely in-house. Their matcha is made by applying the traditional hon-gyokuro cultivation method that made this village Japan's most celebrated gyokuro region. The garden is led by Yamaguchi Shinya, who at thirty-two became the youngest person ever certified as a cha-shi jūdan, a tenth-dan tea master — a rank held by fewer than twenty people in the country.