How POEMS Works

How POEMS Works

Most brands that sell Japanese tea and teaware buy through importers and distributors. The product moves through three or four pairs of hands before it reaches you. Each step adds margin, removes accountability, and puts more distance between the story and the person holding the cup.

We work differently. Every product in our collection comes from a direct relationship with a specific person - a tea farmer, a tea maker, a potter,  whose name, practice and standards we can account for.

1. Direct from the Makers

The standard supply chain for a Japanese tea product sold in Australia looks something like this: a farm in Japan sells to a regional wholesaler, who sells to a national importer, who sells to an international distributor, who sells to a retailer, who sells to you. By the time a product reaches the shelf, the story of where it came from: who grew it, under what conditions, with what methods has been reduced to a country of origin label and a few lines of marketing copy.

It means that most retailers genuinely cannot answer specific questions about their products. Which farm? Which harvest?  Which cultivar? The information usually does not travel through that many layers of commerce intact.

POEMS was founded precisely because we wanted to be able to answer those questions, not as a differentiating feature, but because they are the questions that determine whether a product is actually as good as it claims to be.

2. The matcha farm - Wazuka, Kyoto

Wazuka is a narrow valley in Kyoto Prefecture, approximately 30 kilometres southeast of the city. It is not well known outside Japan. But within the world of Japanese tea, it carries a weight that is difficult to overstate.

The valley produces some of the most concentrated and flavourful Uji matcha in existence. The combination of its geography with its mineral-rich, well-draining soil creates growing conditions that cannot be manufactured elsewhere. The morning mist that settles across the fields each day acts as a natural diffuser, providing the indirect light that tea plants prefer without the stress of direct sun. The cool nights slow the growth of the leaves and concentrate their flavour. The soil, cultivated organically for decades, has developed a living complexity that synthetic fertilisers cannot replicate.

The farm we partner with has beenkj for 4 generations, over 150 years of continuous, uninterrupted tea cultivation on the same land. What distinguishes them is their commitment to doing it the slow way, at every stage of the process, regardless of the economic pressure to do otherwise.

They use only natural fertilisers, blended in-house and adjusted seasonally to respond to what the soil and the plants actually need. They shade their tea plants for 21 days before harvest, using shade cloth that blocks the majority of sunlight and forces the plant to produce more chlorophyll and L-theanine. They harvest exclusively from the first flush of spring, the Ichibancha, and they stone-mill the resulting Tencha at 30 grams per hour on granite mills — not because this is the cheapest or fastest method, but because it is the only method that preserves the antioxidants, aromatics, and vivid colour that make ceremonial-grade matcha worth the name.

>> Our Uji Matcha Collection

3. The tea farm - Shizuoka

Our loose-leaf Japanese teas come from a pioneering organic family farm in Shizuoka Prefecture, the region that produces the majority of Japan's green tea and whose mountain-grown harvests are among the most respected in the country.

Shizuoka's tea-growing heritage stretches back to the 13th century. The region's deep-rooted tea culture, combined with its mountainous geography, cool temperatures, and seasonal fog patterns, creates growing conditions that suit green tea exceptionally well. The farms in the higher elevations of Shizuoka, where our teas come from, produce leaves with a more concentrated flavour and a natural complexity that lowland cultivation rarely achieves.

A farm that rejected pesticides before it was fashionable

What makes our Shizuoka partnership particularly meaningful is its history. The family farm we work with began transitioning away from synthetic pesticides and chemical fertilisers in the 1970s, decades before organic farming became a mainstream concept, and long before JAS (Japanese Agricultural Standards) organic certification existed as a formal framework.

At the time, it was an economic risk. Organic farming produces lower yields, requires more labour, and commands no price premium until the market catches up with the practice. The farm made the decision anyway, out of a conviction about the relationship between soil health, plant health, and the quality of what ends up in the cup.

That conviction is now verified by full JAS organic certification, which the farm has held since the certification programme was established. Every tea we source from Shizuoka is grown without synthetic pesticides, chemical fertilisers, or artificial additives of any kind.

>> Our Tea Collection

4. The kilns

Sourcing teaware from Japan presents a different set of challenges from sourcing tea. Tea farms produce a consumable product in large enough quantities to sustain a commercial relationship. Teaware is made in small batches by individual potters, sometimes one piece at a time in studios that have no marketing department, no export infrastructure, and often no English-language presence at all.

Finding them requires travelling to the kiln regions, visiting studios, and building trust over time with people whose primary language is clay and fire rather than commerce.

We source our teaware from Japan's most significant ceramic regions. Each produces a distinctive aesthetic and functional character, the result of local clay, local firing techniques, and centuries of regional tradition.

Region

Character

POEMS pieces

Tokoname, Aichi

Iron-rich clay that seasons with use, softening tea astringency over time. Clean lines, refined control of form.

AMAIRO Houhin, MOGAKE Kyusu, SUNEZUMI Kyusu, TOBIKANNA Kyusu

Banko, Mie

Fine-grained clay known for heat retention and a distinctive textured surface. Lightweight for its durability.

HATSUYUKI Kyusu

Shigaraki, Shiga

One of Japan's Six Ancient Kilns, over 1,000 years of history. Natural ash glazing, organic surface texture. No two pieces identical.

USUKI, HOMURA, MIZUIRO, KOKIAKE, HARIZURI Teacups

Tamba, Hyogo

One of Japan's Six Ancient Kilns. Dark, earthy, fire-marked surfaces that deepen with use. Ancient kiln atmosphere firing.

SEIRAN Chawan, MIRU Spouted Matcha Bowl

Kyō-yaki, Kyoto

Refined, painted, precise. The tea ceremony aesthetic — elegant and deliberately restrained.

SABIRIKYU Chawan

 

>> Our Teaware Collection

4. What direct sourcing means for what ends up in your cup

A tea or teaware product is the sum of every decision made in its production. The soil the tea was grown in. The fertiliser used or not used. The harvest date. The processing method. The firing temperature. The clay. Each decision either adds to the quality of the final product or detracts from it, and most of those decisions happen invisibly, far upstream of the retailer.

When you buy through an importer who buys through a wholesaler who buys through a distributor, you are trusting a chain of incentives that does not necessarily align with quality. Each step in that chain is optimised for margin, not for the cup.

When we buy directly from the farm, we know the decisions they make because we have asked about them and seen the evidence in the field. When we work with Gyokko kiln, we know their clay is prepared by his own hands because we have visited their studio. That knowledge does not guarantee perfection  but it guarantees accountability, which is the next best thing.

Every product in the POEMS collection exists because a specific person in Japan made a specific decision to do something the slow, careful, uncompromising way.  And because we found them, visited them, and chose to build a relationship rather than a transaction. The tea in your cup and the cup in your hands carry that history with them.

 

 

Related reading

Each section of this article has a dedicated deep-dive post in the How We Source series:

 

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