Ise Tea: Mie's Overlooked Green Tea Region

Mie is consistently among Japan's top three or four prefectures for green tea production by volume, though it gets far less attention abroad than Shizuoka or Uji. Most of the crop is grown in the hilly areas around the Suzuka mountain range, with a style often labeled Ise-cha. Much of Mie's tea is actually sold on to blenders elsewhere or used in Uji-brand blends, so the prefecture's contribution isn't always visible to consumers.

Ise-cha tends to be a fairly standard sencha style — steamed green tea with a grassy, slightly astringent character — though some producers make kabusecha, a shaded tea with a sweeter, less bitter profile similar to gyokuro but less intense. If you want to try it specifically rather than as an anonymous blending component, look for tea shops or roadside stations in the Mie countryside that sell single-origin local tea rather than national supermarket brands.