Japanese Karigane

Rare Tea Company

£45

This beautifully balanced Japanese loose leaf green tea is made from the leaves and stem of the highest grade gyokuro. Sourced from the small but legendary organic farm of the Sakamoto family. Karigane translates as 'Wild Goose' - supposedly because the pale colour of the stems against the green leaf look like wild geese sitting in the branches of trees. It is also known as stem tea, kukicha or twig tea.

Rare Tea Company's own words, read from their page.

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Where this comes from

The part other shops don't tell you. Three separate questions, kept separate on purpose, each with its source.

UK company
Registered at Companies House as RARE TEA COMPANY LIMITED, number SC269185. Checked 2026-09-06.
Means the business is a British legal entity, not a British-sounding name owned elsewhere. It says nothing about where anything is made.
UK operations
Not yet checked.
Means people employed here, or premises they actually work from. We keep this separate from the company badge because a registered office can be an accountant's spare room, and a company can be registered in Britain while everything it does happens somewhere else. Where we have not looked, we say so rather than assuming.
British-owned
No majority shareholding traced outside the UK. Companies House.
Read from the register of people with significant control, following the chain of holding companies. It does not gate anything: a firm can be made here and owned elsewhere, and that is worth telling you rather than hiding.
Where it is made
The maker doesn't say, so neither do we.
This is about the individual product, not the company. A British firm can sell things made abroad, which is normal and not a criticism. We would rather tell you which is which than average them into a score.

Japanese Karigane

Where this comes from

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