Tea Places: Baisa Nakamura

In last week’s blog post, I shared my visit to Jinjiro, a very traditional matcha shop in Uji. The Japanese Tea Master course with the Global Japanese Tea Association also brought us to Baisa Nakamura as a contrast to that experience. This cafe is more experimental, pushing the boundaries of what Japanese tea may be perceived to be.

Baisa Nakamura opened in 2022 on the road to the Byodoin Temple in Uji, Kyoto. The establishment features a long tea bar and a wide variety of beautiful teaware, but what I found most fascinating was the miniature tea factory. The owner, Eiji Nakamura, welcomed us and shared a bit about his journey with tea. He was born into a family of tea merchants and spent several years working on a tea farm in Kagoshima. Eiji also traveled to Taiwan to learn about the tea processing methods there. Our instructor, Mika, translated for us, but Eiji’s passion for tea was evident and came through clearly.

It was quite warm that day, so the first thing we were served was nitro green tea. There was a foamy head with a smooth, silky texture. I was surprised to find that the aroma and taste of the tea, particularly the umami aspect, were still prominent. Brewed tea is infused with nitrogen gas, which creates small and stable bubbles. I had only seen this done with a few teas before in the US, but none of them were as well executed.

Baisa Nakamura had a small selection of teas for sale as well as many beautiful teapots on display. I still had one more week left in Japan, so I decided to only take one tea home with me. It was a very interesting one for any tea nerd, though. It was a hand-rolled sencha made from Zairai trees that are at least 150 years old. Eiji shared that he taught himself how to hand-roll tea leaves in the older style (before the needle shape that we know today) using books. How cool is that?

One of the most innovative aspects of Baisa Nakamura is its method of freezing tea leaves to preserve them for processing at a later time. This technique allows them to demonstrate for customers how tea is made in their in-house factory, regardless of the season. That level of accessibility is unheard of in the tea world. Eiji opened a defrosted bag of two-year-old tea for us, and I could not believe how green, fresh, and aromatic the leaves were. It was like they had just been harvested.

We were then able to see how the leaves are processed from beginning to end. The mini factory can handle about 2 kilograms of tea leaves at one time. The machines all looked exactly like scaled-down versions of their regular-sized counterparts that we had seen at a tea farm earlier in the week. As they went through each step, Eiji touched and smelled the leaves to determine when it was time to move on to the next step. The drying step smelled especially amazing. We all wished that the toasty aroma could be bottled as a perfume.

While the leaves finished processing, we were treated to a rapid succession of sencha, gyokuro, and matcha that left me feeling positively tea tipsy. It is a good thing that we had a substantial lunch beforehand. One of the favorites was a hand-rolled (temomi) sencha that Eiji produced himself. We were also able to taste the freshly processed sencha. It was sweet and mellow, and the leaves looked beautiful when they unfurled.

Visiting Baisa Nakamura was such a cool experience. I’ve been following them on Instagram for a while now, and I’m so glad that I was able to experience it in person. This would be a great place to bring family and friends who might not be as interested in tea as you are when visiting Uji.

Have you ever been to Baisa Nakamura? I’d love to hear all about it in the comments below!

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