Ogura, Uji Matcha

Ogura is a small district within Uji, on land that used to sit at the edge of a freshwater lake until it was drained for farming in the 1930s.

The Ogura area is part of greater Uji, just north of the Uji River. Some tea fields here have been worked continuously for more than 200 years. The soil owes a lot to Lake Ogura, which once covered most of the surrounding plain. When the lake was reclaimed for agriculture in the mid-20th century, the resulting fields inherited a deep layer of nutrient-rich lake-bed sediment.

Production scale is small. Most Ogura farmers run 1-3 hectare plots and sell their tencha to Uji-based blenders, which is why you usually see Ogura matcha listed under broader "Uji" branding rather than as a single-origin label. The few times it does surface as Ogura specifically (most often through producers like Yoshida Meichaen), the matcha is a textbook Uji profile with deep umami and a rounded, low-bitterness body.

Kettl sources several single-origin Ogura matchas in our database (Ryokka, Shunka, Wakakusa, Hakusan, Kiyona). A good entry point if you want to see how a specific micro-region within Uji expresses.