We don't sell the story. We publish the results.
Every tin we put our name on got there the same way — tasted blind, scored against the same rubric, sourced with care, and put on the record. This is the standard behind the number on the tin.
Most tea is sold to you on faith.
There are two usual stories — heritage and hype. Both can be true: the farms are real, and some drops sell out because the tea is genuinely good. But both ask the same thing of you: trust us, and don't check.
We're not against tradition — a great matcha is great largely because of things that are tradition. The cultivar, the shade-growing, the stone mill, the maker's hand. We keep all of that. But traditional is also just a word you can print on a bag, and a sold-out drop tells you about demand, not the leaf. Blind tasting is how you tell the two apart.
So we earn it a third way — not where we came from or who follows us, but what's in the cup, on the record, yours to check.
Four things happen before a tea earns the tin.
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№ 01
Tasted blind.
Every candidate is blind-coded and scored — no farm name, no price, no story in the room. A tea earns its place on the sheet, or it doesn't. It is never simply sold to us.
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№ 02
Water, held constant.
We build our own water from scratch, remineralized to a target profile, with prep kept identical cup to cup — so what you're judging is the leaf, not our kettle. Every variable we can hold, we hold.
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№ 03
Source vetted, bar fixed.
We pick suppliers on what shows up in the cup, then hold every batch to the same bar. The relationship can grow; the standard doesn't bend.
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№ 04
Results published.
The scores, the split decisions, even where our own two-rater method falls short of a full sensory panel — all of it goes on the record. And the order never changes: the report comes first, then the tin. If a tea hasn't cleared the sheet, it doesn't get one.
Same standard, every batch.
We don't promise every tin tastes identical — tea is agricultural, and a fine leaf moves a little from lot to lot.
What we promise is that the test doesn't move. Every batch clears the same bar; when a lot carries its own character, it's noted on the tin. “Every tin passed the same test — here's how this one tastes” is a promise we can keep. “Every tin is identical” isn't, so we won't make it.
Which brings us to M099.
M099 didn't earn the tin for where it came from. It earned it on the sheet.
blind-coded specimens · tied at the top
In the tasting notes: creamy and floral on the nose, a coated, silky mouthfeel, a sweet-umami balance with almost no bitterness, and a clean finish. The full survey — eleven specimens across four sessions, six axes, two calibrated raters, split scores and caveats included — is Report No. 01. Taste what we tasted, then decide.
Honest leaves. An honest process. A price that stays honest — because you're paying for tea, not a story.