Craft
Two leaves and a bud.
Every leaf that becomes Royal Tea is picked by hand — never a shear, never a harvester.
Why hand-plucking matters
Only the youngest two leaves and the terminal bud carry the highest concentration of essential oils, theanine, and polyphenols. Machines cannot make that judgement — a trained hand can, and does, thousands of times a day.
The dawn shift
Plucking begins at 5:30 AM, before the sun warms the leaf. Cooler leaf retains more aroma and travels the two kilometres to our factory without wilting.
Skilled pluckers
Our senior pluckers can identify a healthy shoot from three metres away and pluck it in a single fluid motion. It takes about three years to reach that level of precision.