"Kobataen" is a tea farmer and tea house where our successive owners have carefully cultivated tea leaves. Not only the experience and intuition for tea cultivation, but the unique and honed "appraisal" technique has been passed down.

Every year, when tea leaves picked during the summer are firstly processed to be "crude tea" and are on the market, connoisseurs manage to find the qualified crude tea. The taste and flavor of tea leaves slightly differ from each other by daily maintenance procedure of tea plants, picking and processing methods of tea leaves, even the one picked from same area. We have been very familiar with tea leaves from cultivation to processing. We have accumulated know-how to discriminate subtle difference of the leaves by making full use of five senses as if we hear the voice of tea, including the "weight", "touching", "flavor", "complexion", "water color" when pouring the hot water and its "taste", "richness" and others.

Extracting natural taste and flavor of tea leaves as well as choosing the best tea leaves among hundreds of them are also the responsibility of the tea connoisseur. "Roasting" is an important process influencing the taste and flavor of tea, however, "Kobataen" doesn't make strong "roast" intentionally. Examining the taste and flavor which tea has and we deliver the first-best tea. There is a "Chakabuki" contest which has been held since Muromachi period, just as sommelier appraising wine. The tea connoisseurs of "Kobataen" acquired a grade at "Contest of Technique of Screening Tea" not only winning the championship and receiving prizes. Our tea connoisseurs are licensed Japanese Tea Instructors and Japanese Tea Appraisers.