How tea is picked, and why it matters

Knowing how tea was picked can help us understand the leaves behind a bowl of matcha.

During our field visits, we looked at three common approaches: picking by hand, using a portable machine operated by two people, and using a larger harvesting vehicle.

Picking by hand

Hand picking allows a skilled picker to select the leaves carefully. They can choose tender new growth at the right stage, avoiding leaves that are too young, too mature, or damaged.

This approach is often used for fine tencha, gyokuro, and sencha. It is associated with naturally shaped bushes, known as shizen-shitate, and shade cloth supported above the plants.

The picking method changes with the tea being made. A picker might take individual leaves, strip leaves from a stem, or pick a whole shoot.

It is slow work that relies on experience. Our original notes gave a rough figure of around one kilogram of leaves per hour for hand picking.

Using a portable harvester

A machine held by two people can gather more leaves in less time. It can also work on sloping fields, including gardens where shade material is laid directly over the bushes, a method called jikakabuse.

We see this approach in growing areas such as Wazuka and Yame. In our field notes, the illustrative rate was around ten kilograms per hour. Actual output depends on the conditions and the work being done.

Using a harvesting vehicle

Larger harvesting machines are suited to broad, flatter fields, such as those found in parts of Shiga, Shizuoka, and Kagoshima. They offer high capacity and increasingly advanced controls.

Both kinds of machine are efficient, but they cannot select each leaf as individually as a hand picker. The harvest can include older or younger leaves, stems, and small branches.

The operator also needs care and skill. Cutting too deeply into the bush can damage the plant and affect its health and future harvests.

The work behind the price

The selectivity of hand picking comes with more labour and more time. In our 2025 notes, we also discussed rising wages and a shortage of workers in Japan's ageing population, which were adding pressure to the cost of hand-picked tea.

These differences help explain a producer's choices and some of the information on a tea label.

Learning how the leaves were gathered gives us another way to understand what we are buying, and to choose tea that suits what we want to drink.