Yabukita vs Saemidori vs Okumidori
Three Japanese cultivars that account for a great deal of what reaches a drinker, chosen for three different reasons: national reliability, premium sencha character, and a harvest date that spreads a producer’s labour. Only one of those reasons is about flavour.
cultivar
What is being compared
Point by point
| Aspect | Yabukita | Saemidori | Okumidori |
|---|---|---|---|
| Why it is planted | Cold hardiness, yield and a reliable balance of aroma and umami. | Premium sencha character — more sweetness, less astringency. | Its late budding, which spreads the harvest after the sencha rush. |
| Budding time | Conventional. | Early. | Late. |
| Parentage | Selected in Shizuoka in the early twentieth century. | A cross of Yabukita and Asatsuyu. | A Yabukita descendant. |
| Liquor colour | Conventional. | Intensely green — a cultivar effect regularly misread as deeper steaming. | Holds colour well under shading, which is why so much single-cultivar matcha uses it. |
| Where it dominates | Nationally, by planted area. | Kagoshima, as the leading premium sencha cultivar. | Matcha and gyokuro production. |
| Character | Balanced rather than distinctive, which is precisely why it was planted so widely. | Noticeably sweeter than Yabukita with less astringency. | An agronomic virtue more than a flavour one. |
The short answer
Yabukita’s ubiquity is the reason so much Japanese green tea tastes recognisably related, and single-cultivar teas are sold specifically as an escape from it. Okumidori is the case where the reason for planting has nothing to do with the cup and shapes it anyway.
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