Shizuoka is the largest producer of Japanese green tea — almost half of it is grown in this prefecture. Shizuoka is mostly famous for its deep steamed fukamushi sencha production as well as other kinds of green tea. Still they also do make matcha from leaves grown in the vicinity of Mount Fuji where they only use organic fertilizers. The tea trees are shaded for twenty days before the crop. Then the plucked leaves are steamed and dried up in the brick hearth. Finally the dried leaves called tencha (the raw material for making matcha) are carefully ground in the stone mill to obtain the best quality ceremonial grade matcha powder.
