Ippodo

Ippodo traces to 1717, when Rihei Watanabe opened a shop called Omiya on Teramachi Street to sell tea and ceramics along the eastern edge of the Kyoto Imperial Palace grounds. In 1846 the shop took the name Ippodo -- "preserve one" -- at the suggestion of Prince Yamashina, a regular customer who wanted the shop to hold to a single standard of quality rather than diversify. That Teramachi Street address remains the flagship today, still selling around 30 variants of matcha, gyokuro, sencha and bancha from an old-fashioned counter where staff talk customers through the differences before a purchase. Attached to the shop is the Kaboku Tearoom, open through the afternoon and closed the second Wednesday of each month, where the same teas sold by the tin can be ordered whisked or steeped and drunk on the spot -- a rare chance to taste a grade of gyokuro or ceremonial matcha before committing to buy it loose. Three centuries of continuous operation on the same street, through a name change and the shift from an Edo-period tea-and-ceramics shop to a global specialty retailer, have kept Ippodo's reputation tied to Kyoto rather than to any single signature blend: the counter conversation and the tearoom tasting are as much the product as the tea itself.