Hoshino Seichaen - Yame Hoshi no Matcha Sticks

🍃 Yame · Hoshi no Matcha — Stick Sachets (八女・星の抹茶スティック)

• Origin: Hoshinomura, Yame, Fukuoka, Japan
• Producer: Hoshino Seichaen (Est. 1946)
• Format: Individual 1.5 g sticks, nitrogen-flushed
• Grade: Equivalent to the producer's Yame no Hana
• Ingredients: 100% Japanese green tea (matcha)

🌿 Tasting Profile

• Color: Deep green, fresh from the stick
• Aroma: Toasty and warm, the signature Hoshino fragrance
• Flavor: Rich and rounded, with soft umami and gentle bitterness
• Texture: Particle-adjusted to resist clumping, so it disperses more easily than most bagged matcha
• Character: Real ceremonial-style matcha, portioned — not a convenience blend

🌸 Our Story

Matcha is difficult to package one bowl at a time. The powder is fine enough to compact, and the moment it meets air its aroma begins to leave. Most producers simply don't try.

Hoshino Seichaen spent the effort. They developed a method of fine-tuning the particle size so that a single portion won't clump in the sachet, then filled each stick with nitrogen so that the tea inside is as fresh as the day it came off the stone mill. The result took the Highest Gold Award at the World Green Tea Contest in 2020.

We carry it for the same reason we carry any tin here: it is the real thing, not a compromise. One stick, one bowl, in a hotel room in another country or at a desk on a Wednesday afternoon — the mountain fog of Oku-Yame, opened one at a time.

☕ Enjoy it

One stick to roughly 60–70 ml of hot water for usucha, whisked with a chasen. Also excellent shaken cold, blended into a latte, or spooned over yoghurt and ice cream. Because this is pure fine-particle matcha, a whisk or blender is needed — it will not stir smooth with a spoon.

🏯 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.