Where frame sources
Wazuka
Wazuka is where it started. The first tea field in Japan is generally agreed to have been planted in Harayama, a subsection of Wazuka, and those same circular fields are still farmed today. The village is small, steep, and stubbornly itself. Because the hillsides are so difficult to cultivate, much of the work is still done by hand, and the concentration of small family farms here is far greater than in other tea-growing regions. That difficulty is inseparable from the quality. What ends up in the chawan is something layered and quietly alive: sweetness that arrives slowly, umami that stays.
Uji
If you've heard of one matcha region, it's probably Uji. And the reputation is earned: the river valley, the morning mist, the slow-growing cold that concentrates every good thing in the leaf. But reputation can become a shortcut, and not everything carrying the Uji name reflects what the place is actually capable of. We work with the farms that still do the work. When you open a Frame tin sourced from Uji, you're tasting a place that has been perfecting this for five centuries; and a farm that hasn't stopped trying to get it right.
Kagoshima
Most people don't think of Kagoshima when they think of matcha. We did, because we went looking. At the southern edge of Japan's main islands, Sakurajima volcano has been quietly enriching the soil for centuries; layer by layer, harvest by harvest. The farms here are small, often family-run for generations, growing tea in mineral-rich earth that gives the cup a depth you don't expect until you taste it. We keep coming back, because once you know this matcha, it's hard to settle for anything else.