About the tea grown in the fields of TEA FACTORY GEN

Nice to meet you, this is Takahashi from TEA FACTORY GEN. It's a little embarrassing to tell you what we think, but we would like to talk about the tea we make. There are two main points that characterize our tea making.

One is that they grow native varieties of tea.

The second is that they are grown naturally (no fertilizers or pesticides).

is.

Hiroshima native tea

Native tea refers to tea planted and grown from seeds.
Therefore, in the first few years, it will take twice as long to harvest than normal tea planted from seedlings.

We usually plant improved tea seedlings. There is no tea that has been rooted in the land and climate and has a polished individuality as much as the native tea. Currently only 3% of all teas are indigenous.

Tea seeds are hybrids. The tea tree has a property called self-incompatibility, which means that it does not mix with other tea plants that have the same properties. Therefore, even in the same field, the taste is completely different depending on the location.
The roots of the native tea tree are like burdock roots, and can grow more than two meters deep into the ground. By doing so, you will get nutrition that contains plenty of minerals in a fairly deep place.

The nature of each tree is also different, and since it is an old tree, the harvest amount is very small, 70% less than that of ordinary tea trees, but that is what makes it possible to use no fertilizers or pesticides. And it is very resistant to environmental changes such as drought.

The taste is different depending on the native tree. The "natural blend" is done when the farmers pick it. No matter how good a master tea master tries to reproduce the taste by blending using breed-improved tea leaves, it is almost impossible.

The native taste is distinctive compared to other varieties.
It has a wild and nostalgic scent and taste in a good way. It can also be described as a continental taste (tea seeds came from China).

Natural cultivation (no fertilizer, no pesticide)

We are making tea without fertilizers and pesticides.

It is said that recent tea has lost its individuality, for better or worse. It's true that when you drink tea from any region, it's delicious and delicious, but all of them feel like the same tea.

As a result of our thinking about why, we thought that chemical fertilizers might be the cause. If chemical fertilizers are used extensively, the taste of tea will increase and become sweeter. In addition to that, there are more ingredients other than umami, so bitterness, acridness, and miscellaneous flavors increase. And it erases the character of the land.

In addition, the overuse of fertilizers promotes the spread of insects and diseases. For this reason, we are forced to use pesticides for control. The weasel play has become the mainstream of modern tea making.

Modern tea making sacrifices the natural environment in order to create umami and increase the yield. After thinking about what kind of sustainable tea production would be good for people and the environment, we came up with non-fertilizer and pesticide-free cultivation.

If you do that, the harvest amount will be halved, and you will not be able to control it, and the risk will be doubled.

However, instead of that, you can make tea full of character that can only be made in Hiroshima, where you can taste the taste of the land here in Hiroshima, and you can make sustainable tea that does not sacrifice human health or the environment.

It's a long and hard expression, but the above is the tea cultivation method that we are particular about.