Seiko Tea

Seiko Tea is a small tea factory based in the heart of the Japanese tea industry in Shizuoka, Japan. Working closely with farmers as well as procuring the best tea leaves from auctions, for over four decades, CEO Tatsuya Hoshi and the tea masters at Seiko Tea have been supplying Japan with top quality Japanese tea.

Company Concept

with the strength of a tea production region-based wholesale factory

Creation of exact taste profile

Whichever variety of tea you select, our experience as tea merchants guarantees that each one was cultivated most recently using different growing methods depending on the region. Our experience as tea manufacturers will ensure that all tea leaves are treated just right until they become as tasty as can be. We are uncompromising when it comes to the production areas and cultivars (cultivated varieties), so even though it's OK to enjoy a tea's flavor just as it is, we can also achieve unlimited variations in the tea's taste profile when different tea leaves are mixed together.

At our company, as a group of highly experienced tea sellers and tea makers, we will work hard to select the best tea leaves each year and prepare them carefully.

Tea leaves

The eye of a tea merchantFrom across the Japan, we buy the best leaves of the season.

Based in the distribution center of Shizuoka, we have access to the best leaves of not only our prefecture but from each major tea production region in Japan.

Located a mere 5-minute walk from the Shizuoka wholesale tea market, if you walked past any tea producer, you would see the tea stock for that day.

Tea is a living being. In order to not get overwhelmed by the amount of production areas and breeding varieties, we select only the best from any given moment. It is said that the selection of raw materials makes up for 70 or 80 percent of the final tea flavor. Therefore, our freedom to choose from a wide range of options is our strong point when it comes to making delicious tea. The eye of a tea merchant

Eye of a tea merchant

Our skilled tea sellers look through more than a hundred varieties of tea every day and skilfully select those of a higher quality.

We inspect the production areas and cultivars for each kind of tea, ascertain their individual characteristics, and then expand that individuality to its fullest potential. Furthermore, we also blend different cultivars of tea to combine their individual characteristics creating a new delicious flavor profile.

At our company, our tea sellers are in charge of stocking up on tea leaves, our raw material, and to do so they skilfully inspect more than a hundred varieties of tea every day. The tea merchants of Shizuoka city, where we are based, also procure many teas from all over the country, and our trained eye provides us with the very best choices.

The skill of a master tea blender

All these skills contribute to guiding the tea down our desired path, until it has acquired exactly the flavor, aroma and color we were aiming for.

First, tea is grown in the fields, then steamed after harvesting, and subsequently a shaped until it becomes what is known as "unrefined tea" or aracha. Unrefined tea already has a beautifully "raw" flavor, and is enjoyable in its own right. However, the kind of tea which you all love is called "finished tea" or shiagecha (shee-AH-geh-chah), and has been carefully sifted to remove smaller bits of leaf, stems, and fannings.

At our company we make sure to guide tea through this entire process until it achieves the desired flavor, aroma and color. We do this by applying our most skilled techniques to the task of subtly differentiating each variety of tea from within the tea fields, and in so doing we aim for the most delicious, most fragrant tea we possibly can.

• CEO: Tatsuya Hoshi
• Employees: 20
• Established: April, 1975
• Address: 4-64 Anzai, Aoi-ku, Shizuoka-shi, Shizuoka, 420-0011