茶摘み/hand-picking

お茶の手摘みの仕方にも色々あり、画像の茶園は「しごき摘み」と呼ばれる摘み方が行われた玉露の茶園です。
柔らかい葉だけを綺麗に摘み取り、後には茎のみが残る摘み方です。

このように丁寧に摘み取られた生葉ですが、玉露を精製いたしますと、その量は6分の1程度にまで減ってしまうことも。
玉露の希少性は、このような生産工程からも生まれています。

There are various methods of hand-picking tea, and the tea garden in the image is a gyokuro tea garden where the plucking method known as 'shigoki-dumi' is used.
In this method, only the tender leaves are picked cleanly, leaving only the stems behind.

The raw leaves are picked carefully in this way, but when gyokuro is refined, the quantity is reduced to as little as one-sixth.
The rarity of gyokuro is also born from this production process.