„Each tea has its own charme, reflecting the character of the tea garden it comes from.“

In line with this idea, the exact origin of our teas plays the most important role at MARIMO. It is not about the approximate region from which a tea originates. Rather, it is about the character of each individual tea garden of our partners in Japan, even each tea garden plot. And it is about the handwriting and style of those who tend the garden, plan and carry out the harvest, and who may regard every single step of tea production as their art.

THE way of ecological thinking

All teas in the MARIMO tea assortment – with a focus on organic green tea from Japan – come from mostly family-run tea gardens that place great value on organic cultivation methods as a result of their own way of thinking. While some of our Chinese teas also come from larger tea-growing projects, sometimes from cooperatives of several small tea gardens, we obtain our Japanese green teas exclusively from small family-run tea gardens that have long-standing partnerships with MARIMO. Our Japanese families dedicate themselves to most of the work in the tea garden, in tea production and tea processing, and therefore have as “employees” primarily the family members themselves, who often draw on many years of experience, which strongly characterizes the unmistakable style of the teas of each garden.

All teas in our Japanese range of green teas are grown and processed by Japanese family farms with whom we stay in direct and intensive contact, and with whom we have been able to establish many new green tea products over the years that previously were not available in Europe. All of these tea gardens attach great importance to organic cultivation and processing methods, as can be seen in the impressive histories of the gardens‘ origins and development, which we have documented in many ways on our websites and blogs. As a customer, you benefit from the idealism and wealth of experience of our partner tea gardens, as do our suppliers themselves and we:

The intensive contact between MARIMO and our organic tea gardens in Japan not only means that we are exclusive sellers of our teas (including sencha, kabusecha, matcha, gyokuro, kukicha, houjicha, tamaryokucha and kamairicha) outside Japan, but also that we know our suppliers, their organic tea gardens and the tea gardens‘ surroundings very well. Regarding the purity of the teas, this knowledge functions as an additional guarantee, in addition to organic certification. In terms of taste quality, we can rely on our good relationship to always deliver the best quality that our partner tea gardens can offer. Moreover, we regularly visit the tea gardens on site, at least once a year, and regularly help with the tea harvest, giving us an ideal basis for obtaining the best lots. We owe this to the openness and trust of our partner tea gardens, who have entered into close and long-term cooperation with us, which is certainly a rare situation, and a contrast to being “just” a tea producer.

In return, we have committed ourselves to not only selling our suppliers‘ teas as “mere goods”, but to transmit their intention: Producing excellent tea in harmony with the natural environment. All our tea gardens produce organic green tea not because they hope to make more profit, but out of conviction, even though the amount of work involved in organic tea production is significantly higher than in a conventional tea garden. Converting a tea garden to organic cultivation carries a high economic risk, as considerable harvest losses can occur as long as there is no ecological balance in the tea garden’s surroundings. Perseverance and everlasting idealism are therefore important foundations for our partners, some of whom are over 70 years old and still put all their life energy into growing and processing fine Japanese teas.

Our suppliers enable us to provide you, our customers, excellent and unique teas such as sencha, kabusecha, kukicha, houjicha, matcha, gyokuro, tamaryokucha and kamairicha at a first-class price-performance ratio. As a matter of course we always strive to broaden the understanding among our customers and consumers of the challenge this represents for our tea gardens. At the same time, we are contributing to the economic fundament of the tea gardens, and improving it, by continuously increasing the quantity we order.

On our website you can have a closer look on our tea gardens, the tea garden families and their environment. If you have any questions please feel free contact us anytime.