Abstract: Content of water in soil per se does not equate the actual available amount of moisture for the tea plants grown on the land. What counts is the quantity of water that can be properly stored and released from the soil for transporting and absorbing by the roots of the plants at a rate meeting the demand of the canopy. In other words, as far as availability is concerned, seamless matching of the “storage–release–transport–uptake–supply–demand” of water in soil is the key to the usefulness of it. Thus, to thoroughly analyze and understand the critical issue in tea cultivation this article summarizes the effects of rainfall infiltration, water redistribution profile, unsaturated water transporting, root system structure, and heterogenic property of hillslope water on the dynamic water supply in rhizosphere as well as their relationships with the water status, stomatal regulation, photosynthesis, yield, and quality of the plants. Approaches for efficient water management, such as surface mulching, rhizosphere improvement, precision irrigation, utilization of middle- and deep-layer water, integrated monitoring, and multi-facet modelling, are reviewed. At present, quantified rhizosphere hydraulic resistance, compensatory water uptake of roots, deep-water utilization, and subsurface lateral flow remain insufficiently available. It would foster further progress in research if studies focusing coordinated observations on soil, roots, and plants as well as establishments of water-stress thresholds, standardized soil hydraulic parameter databases, and process-based rhizosphere water supply regulation are conducted in the future.