Japanese tea cultivar was started with “Yabukita”. In 1908, Hikosaburo Sugiyama found an excellent tea tree among selected native varieties trees in Shizuoka prefecture. That tree was grown on the north side of bushes. He named that excellent tree “Yabukita” (薮北). That was the story of the first tea cultivar in Japan. Since then, many cultivars have been breeding in multiple research institutes.
Each cultivar has different characteristics of tastes, aroma, leaf color, watercolor, harvest season, resistance to disease, insect, and cold weather. And some cultivars were bred to be used for specific tea types. Recent some new cultivars were aimed to meet the preferences of overseas Japanese tea lovers.
In this section, we keep adding contents of Japanese tea cultivar information such as pedigree and taste characteristics. And we hope it will help you to choose your single cultivar tea products and find your favorite tastes.