Ariake Kaikou Harbor Matcha Kuromitsu Cake

When Yokohama opened to foreign trade in 1859, two things went out of the harbour above all others: raw silk, and tea.

Japanese green tea left this port for the world, and Ariake built the Kaikou Harbour around that piece of the city’s history.

Kaikou means the opening of the port. The cake is a deliberate echo of what the ships carried.

The matcha is not off the shelf. Ariake developed it with Yasuyuki Suda, a tea master holding the tenth dan, the highest rank in Japan’s national tea appraisal system, at Hokodo, a long-established Uji tea house in Kyoto.

The resulting blend is called Banjo no Ao, the blue of the depths, named for the vivid blue-green cast that distinguishes high-grade matcha from the flat green of cheaper powder.

Ariake works it into a house-made matcha an, then encloses two things inside: candied chestnuts, and matcha kuromitsu — the dark unrefined sugar syrup that Japanese sweet shops pour over kudzu jelly and shaved ice.

What arrives is the same ship-shaped cake Ariake has made in Yokohama for over sixty years, in a different register.

The thin castella shell stays soft and moist; underneath, the matcha an carries a real astringency that keeps the kuromitsu from tipping into simple sweetness, with the chestnut giving something to bite through.

Bitter, dark-sweet and nutty in that order. It is the more grown-up of the Harbour range, and the one to reach for with unsweetened tea. Each piece is individually wrapped in its own printed sleeve.

About this item
Item Name : Kaikou Harbor Matcha Kuromitsu
Brand : Ariake
Item Form : Cake
Number of Items : 5, 8, 12 Counts (Box of 1)