Gekkou Matcha

Visit the Nishide's headquarters and you will find three generations--not in spirit, not in legacy--working side by side. The family's melding of expertise in craft and sincerity in ethos is a coupling that is rarely found stronger, even in Uji. Shade grown for four weeks in Okunoyama, the soft blue-green tencha leaves of Gekkou (Moonlight) are entirely stone milled in house. In the matcha boom, milling has become a choke point, especially for producers without mills--and true stone milling, with its slow output, is rarer than ever, but the Nishide family remains authentically undaunted, turning their shade-grown blend into a silky, redolent and luminous matcha with dreamy undercurrents.