Good water and soil, check. We understood those to be crucial factors in the agriculture of tea. The wara, or river reeds, are first used for the shading system above the Gyokuro tea plants, and then later, as ground cover and fertilizer. The rains that soak the reeds filtrate the nutrients down to the soil.
But we walked into one of the most fruitful persimmon seasons ever, the fuyu kaki. The farmers explained to us that how they discovered the way to remove the bitterness from the tea leaves was by the same way they remove the bitterness from making dried persimmons!
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