Producer: Minato Tea Farm
Region: Wazuka, Kyoto, Japan
Cultivar: Saemidori
About the Region
Our relationship with Minato began in 2023, when we travelled to the rolling hills of Wazuka, Kyoto to spend time in a region blessed with hilly terrain and misty valleys. These growing conditions help produce some of the highest quality teas in Japan.
While Wazuka is known as the heartland of Uji tea, one of Japan’s most famous tea-growing regions, it still accounts for only around 2% of Japan’s total tea production. That small share makes each harvest feel even more precious.
About our Partner Farm
It’s rare to find this mix of high-level skill and genuine heart. The Minato family has been growing tea for generations, and that legacy is very much alive.
When we visited during harvest, we saw it firsthand: multiple generations out in the fields, working side by side to draw the most vibrant flavor out of each crop. They are literal champions of the craft, winning national and regional awards since the 1850s, but they don’t rest on their history.
They are active, curious, and incredibly generous. They welcomed us into their process with total openness, from how they raise seedlings to how they shade and process each batch.
About the Cultivar
Saemidori is already known for being vivid and creamy, but Minato’s expression hits differently. They raise their own seedlings in Wazuka and use sheltered racks instead of laying shading material directly on the crop.
This method gives the plants room to breathe and grow without overheating, which translates into a smoother, more aromatic finish. Minato doesn’t chase volume; they harvest early, while the buds are still soft and tender.
You can taste these decisions in the cup: a bright, low-astringency matcha with dense umami and a long, gentle finish.
Art has always been a big deal to us
Honestly, this project started because art is something we care about deeply. We wanted that to show up somewhere tangible — not just in the tea, but in the things you hold, the things that sit in your pantry.
So we started Artists of Tomo. The idea is simple: we invite an artist or designer to create original work that lives on our packaging. No structured briefs that kill the creativity, no safe choices. Just real collaboration with people whose work we genuinely love. Yoshiko is our first, and we couldn't be happier about it.
Yoshiko is a graphic designer and creative director based in Tokyo. She doesn't box herself in. Her work spans branding, logo design, printed materials, websites, merch, and event direction. She follows the concept wherever it needs to go and finds the right form for it. That flexibility is exactly what drew us to her.
Before going independent, she worked as an art director at an artist agency, directing international advertising campaigns with artists based mostly in London.
The thing she's most proud of? The studio she's been running with a close friend from university, Slogan Studio, which just hit its fifth anniversary. It's a design studio, an office, and a risograph print workshop all in one. Slogan was also the birthplace of our Saemidori labels. She calls it a hideaway. "A space filled with curiosity, mistakes, and joy." That last part really stuck with us.
Why it looks the way it does
Risograph printing isn't for people who need everything to be perfect. The process has its own character — slight misregistrations, ink variations, a handmade quality that you just can't fake. Yoshiko leaned into all of that.
She started by getting to know Tomo — the vision, the daily illustrations, the tea's origins in Wazuka, Kyoto. What she kept coming back to was the idea of human texture. Hand-drawn lines, paper, imperfections, the feel of something hand-picked. She didn't want the labels to feel corporate or overproduced. "The texture of people, materials, and process became the inspiration behind the labels." We think she nailed it.
Yoshiko drinks tea every day. Not as a big formal thing, more like a natural pause after a meal, or a cold glass after coming in from a hot Tokyo summer. She gets it. That ease and simplicity is something we hope comes through in the work she made for us.
Ask Yoshiko about her mission and she'll tell you she's still figuring it out — and she's made peace with that. There was a time she felt pressure to "be someone," but she's moved on from that. She holds onto a quote by Bruno Munari: that a designer's role is to help eliminate cultural ignorance across all social classes. For her, staying rooted in her own culture and keeping her curiosity alive is enough of a north star.
About the Designer: Yoshiko Tezuka · Tokyo, Japan · @yoshi____tokyo
https://yoshikotezuka.com/
