This central Japan city has become the country’s first “green tea liqueur special zone,” in which legal hurdles are lower for small businesses to make liqueur using green tea, and a local manufacturer is aiming to launch a champagne-like green tea drink around March next year.
Extract from high-quality tea leaves grown in the city of Kakegawa — one of the largest tea-producing cities in Japan — is used for the product being developed by Matsushita Tea Garden, which plans to sell 1,500 liters of the drink with around 12% alcohol by volume in the first fiscal year that its liqueur goes on sale. The producer has already developed a sparkling liqueur using high-quality tea extract mixed with an alcoholic beverage and carbonating it…
