Mr Amano’s tea field in Kumamoto is often dubbed as “tea field in the sky”.
Those fields were once devastated during the second World War, but his family revived them and has been developing further to produce green tea and black tea.
In most cases of the current Japanese tea industry , the tea is usually propagated by cutting. However, Mr Amano has been trying to grow tea from seed, going against the current the times. Of course, with no agricultural chemicals, no fertilizers, no herbicide….
Compare to the cutting propagation, labor and time are much more required to grow tea from seed. The output is not that big either. But once the tea are grown big enough, the trees will live longer and stronger against insect pests, drought etc. And of course, the natural and powerful tea flavor unique to seed-grown tea will come out when they are processed as the tree absorbs the energy from the earth.
“Tea grown in the mother of nature will give you more power and energy.” This is what he says.
The below is the article about Mr Amano (mainly about black tea known as wakocha). Unfortunately it is written in Japanese, but you may be interested in beautiful photos
