Matcha Kuro | 抹茶 黒 – 30g

The Story Behind Shiro & Kuro

We are in the middle of a matcha boom.

There are countless matcha drinks and matcha products everywhere now, mostly centered around matcha lattes. I’m happy to see matcha being enjoyed so flexibly and globally.

But at the same time, I’ve realized that many people are not actually experiencing the true goodness of Japanese matcha, and are judging matcha based on cheaper alternatives.

I assume that for many people, “matcha” simply means a bitter powder with a dull green color — something that is always mixed with milk and a lot of sugar. And yet, many of them are still called “Ceremonial Matcha.”

Matcha wasn’t the main focus of Kawagiri in the beginning. But as a Japanese person running a tea shop focused on Japanese tea, I gradually started to feel a certain responsibility to represent Japanese tea properly. I wanted to be able to offer traditional Japanese matcha with its true goodness.

Among the many matcha options available today, I want Kawagiri to be a place where people can experience classic Japanese matcha that has been developed and refined through generations of history and craftsmanship.

Shiro and Kuro are the matchas that represent those qualities for me.

Of course, I won’t stop anyone from using them for lattes — they’re actually very good that way too. But these matchas are made for the tea ceremony, with deep umami, elegant sweetness, and ooika. By enjoying them in the traditional way — as usucha (thin tea) or, in the case of Kuro, even koicha (thick tea) — you can experience their true beauty.

Shiro and Kuro come from Uji, one of the most prestigious and historically important places in the world of Japanese tea, where tea culture, craftsmanship, and techniques have been developed and refined for centuries.

To me, the taste of traditional Uji matcha represents one of the most classic and fundamental expressions of Japanese matcha.

While learning about matcha, I tried many different ones, but I always kept Uji matcha with me as a kind of textbook and reference point. In fact, the matcha I used as that textbook is what’s inside Shiro and Kuro.

The producer is a long-established tea house founded in 1858, and I was very fortunate to receive their support and permission to make these matchas available in my own Kawagiri tins.

Tetsu, Kawagiri Tea