Matcha cultivars, explained.

What a cultivar is

All tea comes from one species, Camellia sinensis. In Japan, almost all of it is the small leaf sinensis kind, which handles cold winters.

Over the twentieth century Japanese researchers bred and registered named varieties. They selected for budding time, frost resistance, colour and flavour. Today the national research body NARO keeps the records.

Cultivars are grown from cuttings, not seed. A seed grows into something new each time. A cutting grows into the same plant as its parent. So a field of one cultivar is thousands of copies of one bush. Same timing. Same flavour.

Cultivars you will see on matcha tins

General characteristics. Flavour also depends on farm, shading, harvest and milling.

Why budding time matters

A cultivar's budding time decides when its spring flush is ready. Early cultivars like Saemidori are picked first, which helps a farm spread its harvest over more days.

Late cultivars like Okumidori bud after the early ones. The new shoots grow in a slightly later, steadier spring. And they are less exposed to the last frosts.

A farm with only one cultivar has to pick everything at once. A farm with early, middle and late cultivars can pick each field at its best.

Single cultivar or blend?

A single cultivar matcha lets you taste one variety clearly, the way a single varietal wine does. A blend combines cultivars, and often regions, to balance colour, sweetness and body, and to keep the flavour steady year to year.

Neither is automatically better. Many of Japan's most respected tea houses sell blends. Blending, gōgumi (合組), is a skill in its own right.

Why Okumidori suits Uji matcha

Okumidori buds late, so its shoots grow through a later, steadier part of spring. It takes shade well, deepening its green and its sweet, savoury taste. That makes it a natural fit for Uji's style of matcha: deep colour, quiet sweetness, a long finish.

Our Kyoto Uji is a single cultivar Okumidori, stone milled. It is the one cultivar we name, because it is the point of that tea.

How to taste the difference

1. Compare two single cultivars side by sideSame water, same temperature, same 2 g in 70 ml at 80°C.
2. Look at the colour firstSaemidori tends brighter; Okumidori deeper.
3. Smell the dry powderNote sweetness, cream, seaweed or grass.
4. Taste plain, without milkSweetness, savoury depth, and where the bitterness lands.
5. Write three words for eachWithin a few sessions you will recognise them.