Today most tea leaves are trimmed by machine and traditional hand picked Gyokuro, Sencha, and Matcha are rarely grown and is therefore very precious. The flavor and aroma of hand picked tea is much more mellow and smooth than tea trimmed by machine.

Tea trees for hand picked and for machine trimmed are grown in different ways, and tea sprouts of both types of trees grow differently. In the case of tea trees trimmed by machine, tea sprouts grow from the previously trimmed stubble. In contrast, in the case of tea trees picked by hand, tea sprouts shoot from the natural forks in the branches. The difference in sprout growth is the main reason why teas picked by hand vs. trimmed by machine have distinctly unique flavors. The flavor and aroma of hand picked tea is much more mellow and smooth than tea trimmed by machine and the leaves are of higher quality.

Even a skilled tea harvester can hand pick just up to 6 to 8kg of fresh tea leaves all through the day. The picked fresh tea leaves are processed and finished, at which point the total weight of the tea leaves is only about 18% of the fresh tea leaves. Even if about 20 skilled tea harvesters pick all through the day, we can only gather around 25 kg of finished precious hand picked tea.

From the time the sprouts appear to the time the leaves become too large to harvest is just a few days. So tea leaves must be harvested as quickly as possible in one long stretch. Therefore it is never easy to pick large amounts of tea leaves by skilled hands in just a few days.
Top grade tea, hand picked tea is grown only in quite a small amount. So, hand picked tea is very precious.

Our Kuradashi Gyokuro Pinnacle, Super Premium, Kuradashi Matcha Pinnacle and Super Premium are carefully picked by hand.

We are planning to sell three limited edition Kuradashi Gyokuro, one Kuradashi Sencha, and three Kuradashi Matcha only available mid-autumn. Please wait and see!