永谷茶業株式会社永谷茶業
Nagatani Chagyo (永谷茶業株式会社) is a family-run Uji tea grower and wholesaler based in Yuyadani, Ujitawara — the Kyoto town where Nagatani Soen developed the steamed sencha method in 1738. The company's own English page says it has run its processing factory for more than 120 years, cultivating fields at Ohbukudani alongside tea bought from neighboring Ujitawara growers, and its official company profile lists matcha alongside sencha, gyokuro, and hojicha among the teas it handles. It operates as a regional wholesaler rather than a public consumer webshop; its stone-mill ground, single-cultivar matcha reaches international buyers mainly through the specialty importer Yunomi.life.
Brand story
Ujitawara is where Nagatani Soen (1681-1778) worked out the steaming-and-rolling method that became the template for modern sencha, and several tea houses in the town trace their identity to that history — Nagatani Chagyo among them, though it is a separate business from the Tokyo food maker Nagatani-en, whose founder was also a descendant of Soen. Representative Nagatani Shigeo, a 6th-rank certified tea-grading technician, runs the company's own Ohbukudani tea fields on the slopes of Mt. Washu, supplementing them with leaf bought from neighboring Ujitawara farmers, and finishes sencha, gyokuro, hojicha, genmaicha, and matcha in-house. Its matcha is ground on traditional stone mills at roughly 40g per hour per mill, and small-batch single-cultivar editions — a Gokou and the rare Tenmyo cultivar registered in 2006 by the Kyoto Prefectural Tea Research Institute — are sold to English-speaking drinkers through the Japan-based specialty importer Yunomi.life rather than through a shop of its own.
Supports: Company profile, address, representative name, matcha listed among products handled
Kyoto Tea Cooperative member directory
Supports: Membership, address confirmation
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