To provide a new optimized processing system for cutting tea in multiple stages, capable of improving quality of a finished tea product as a whole, by optimizing a cutting and collecting step and a tea manufacturing step, and capable of adopting a suitable business technique for satisfying a market trend.

In this system, tea leaves are cut and collected as upper leaves Au and lower leaves Ad by cutting and dividing tea branches with fresh tea leaves A into the upper leaves Au having upper parts of the cut and divided branches and the lower leaves Ad having lower parts thereof, in the cutting and collecting step, and then the cut leaves are transported to a tea manufacturing plant in a cut and divided state as they are. Further, the upper leaves Au and the lower leaves Ad are independently subjected to optimized processing, by taking account of differences between characteristics of the leaves, in the tea manufacturing step, so that a primary tea rolling dryer for conducting squeezing of the leaves together with other operations of compressing, deeply steaming, rubbing, and kneading the leaves is applied to at least a lower leaf-processing line Ld, and therefore the lower leaves Ad are more intensively subjected to the squeezing and the other operations, when compared with the upper leaves Au. Furthermore, a product given by together combining the upper leaves Au and the lower leaves Ad after finished in the manufacturing step, a product given by together combining both the leaves during the manufacturing step, and products which are entirely differently subjected to the tea manufacture step are independently adopted as a product form in the system.