Mandokoro tea

The road into Oku-Eigenji passes Eigenji Dam and enters a cluster of seven mountain settlements near the Echi River headwaters. Tea fields sit by river water and on steep valley slopes, where drainage is quick and morning mist gathers in the Suzuka Mountains. Mandokoro-cha begins in these small hillside plots rather than in broad, level rows.

Many Mandokoro tea trees are seed-grown native trees, so the fields do not look like uniform ridges of cloned bushes. Leaves vary in thickness, roundness, size, and shape, and producers connect those differences to flavor; even fields facing each other across the Echi River can produce distinct cups.

Oku-Eigenji tea fields have continued cultivation without pesticides or chemical fertilizer. Farmers in the headwater area have treated downstream water as part of their work, feeding tea roots with plant-based inputs such as pampas grass, fallen leaves, and rapeseed oil cake gathered for the fields.

The new tea harvest comes in May and June, with much of the work still done by hand. Shigoki-zumi means drawing the fingers along a branch to remove the tender new growth; on steep slopes and among irregular native trees, pickers move through the hillside and judge the leaves branch by branch.

Leaves for bancha are carried to a local factory, where leaves and stems are separated before steaming. The leaves are slowly steamed in wooden tubs, dried, and finished as hira-bancha, turning the larger hillside leaves into a dark, everyday infusion with a process still tied to local tools.

Mandokoro-cha is described through a clean aroma, bitterness, and a faint sweetness in the aftertaste. Sencha left in bottled water for a day becomes an easy cold brew, bancha is used with ochazuke, and sencha appears alongside sweets; the same leaf family moves from a chilled bottle to a rice bowl and a small confection plate.

The production area has about 70 farming households, and recent decades have brought aging producers, declining volume, and pressure on field management. Yamagata Ren, Shiga Prefectural University students, local residents, migrants, and volunteers joined weekend tea-field work, and the 2017 Mandokoro-cha Producer Promotion Association gave the scattered fields a shared structure for cultivation and harvest work.