CEREMONIAL MATCHA SONOGI, a blended matcha from a cooperative of four tea farmers overlooking Ōmura Bay in Higashisonogi, Nagasaki prefecture, Japan. The matcha is one cultivar—yabukita, the gold standard in matcha production—but from four different lots of yabukita tea trees, all planted, tended, shaded, and harvested with the distinct styling of each farmer. Each shades their plants with nylon screens for 21 days before hachiju hachiya ('88 nights'; or, 88 days after the 1st day of spring), when the first flushes are machine-harvested and processed to tencha.