Matcha Cultivar Comparison

Matcha Cultivar Comparison

As some of you may know, I am planning to get into the world of selling matcha on this site and preparing it in my tea room for guests. This article and study was done to help push me forward, off the cliff (so to speak) into what tencha’s/matcha’s I’ll consider for my first big purchase.

Azuma Tea Garden from Kyoto and Yunomi.life put together a tasting experience to compare stone-ground matcha from 10 different cultivars. All matcha’s were prepared with the exact same method (usucha), 2g:60ml, same water batch, same whisk (rinsed between uses), etc.

https://yunomi.life/products/cultivar-comparison-10g-x-10-types-azuma-tea-garden-matcha

The different matcha’s were evaluated in the following categories: Fragrance of the dry powder, aroma at the initial stage of adding water and de-clumping, aroma at the usucha stage, the flavor of the matcha, and the fragrance of the empty bowl. The tasting notes you’ll read below are a direct copy from my work paper. No editing, no dressing anything up. It’s not necessarily a pleasure to read but it’s my honest thought process.

Excercise 1: Drink and evaluate each individual matcha cultivar

Group 1: Okumidori vs Samidori vs Yabukita

Okumidori:
Dry Aroma: Deep, brown-green, baked, chocolate, temple’s, Japan, wafer –> Kitkat
Initial water: Brown
Usucha: Dry Grass, hay
Usucha Flavor: Grassy, not bitter, gritty, sandy texture. That’s weird. Is the stone grinding the reason for this? I don’t think I’ve ever felt this sensation before. It’s like drinking silt.
Empty Bowl: Milk chocolate –> Kitkat, Hay
Thoughts: Not bad

Samidori:
Dry Aroma: (Dark –> Lacquer Shine –> Latex, Patent Leather Black), Mont-Blanc (chestnut puree) Pastries, Desserts, Cakes, Tim Hortons ‘Chocolate Glaze’ “chocolate”
Initial water: Bitter, roasted, folksy, the area of the mountains leading up to the temple, not quite there.
Usucha: White button mushroom
Usucha Flavor: More pronounced than Okumidori, slightly bitter, has higher sour notes, slightly less gritty texture than Okumidori, a bit skunky cannabis notes in the finish, and a bit fishy like tuna toro sushi in the distant finish
Empty Bowl: Grassy tent in summer, sour smell of kool-aid powder
Thoughts: Prefer Okumidori

Yabukita:
Dry Aroma: Sitting in a tent in the summer –> nylon tent, fresh grass, latex paint (sweet)
Initial water: Nondescript green tea, fresh
Usucha: Nondescript green tea
Usucha Flavor: Bitter, smooth, simple, lingering sour finish, gritty texture
Empty Bowl: ?
Thoughts: I can see why most of the matcha I’ve tried… (I actually don’t know if I’ve knowingly had Yabukita matcha before)… isn’t yabukita. It isn’t very interesting at all.

Group 2: Asahi vs Gokou vs Kanaya-Midori vs Okuyutaka

Asahi:
Dry Aroma: Fresh, bright, sencha, Japanese green tea
Initial water: Cacao liquor, Hot brownie, slightly dried grass, summer heat
Usucha: Dry grass (it’s like the smell of a park in the time of the year to hear cicada’s sing)
Usucha Flavor: Vegetal, bitter, skunky basil, cannabis, raw broccoli, astringent raw vegetable juice
Empty Bowl: sweet, citric acid, pixie stix
Thoughts: It’s good, not really deep or complex though

Gokou:
Dry Aroma: Raw green unsalted pistachio nuts, pine nuts, Mediterranean desserts (Baklava and such), Nutty sweet
Initial water: Dango, mochi based sweets, kind of sweet soysaucey
Usucha: ?
Usucha Flavor: Bright, lots of high note — weird, lacks low notes. Very ‘yang’ matcha, lots of reverberating acidic notes. Not bitter or astringent, silty coating on teeth, muddy feeling
Empty Bowl: High tone citrus fruits, lime custard tart
Thoughts: Reminds me of the Uji C1 master ceremonial grade matcha I bought some time ago (which at the time reminded me of Chinese matcha due to its very bright A-typical flavor compared to most Japanese matcha I’ve had)

Kanayamidori:
Dry Aroma: Pistachio butter, aroma seems denser, heavier, oilier, cashew butter, feminine, white soap bar (Dove soap)
Initial water: Warm, baked, dry hay, wet grass
Usucha: Dry hay, kinako flour
Usucha Flavor: Bitter forward, smooth, bold, not astringent, lingering acidic notes
Empty Bowl: Bright green fragrance, buttery, lime flavored sponge cake
Thoughts: has some similarities to Gokou, I prefer Gokou of the two.

Okuyutaka:
Dry Aroma: Pistachio, Pine sap, pine nuts, latex paint, cedar wood, fresh milled lumber, maybe hinoki? It’s very fragrant, the most of the previous 3
Initial water: Toasted sesame seeds, sesame oil, nut butter, toasted nori
Usucha: a dusty blue tarp? on grass
Usucha Flavor: Smooth, very homogeneous/harmonious flavor. Great balance, impeccable matcha… But it hits the wrong chord with me. This is not the ‘chord’ I want to hear when I drink matcha.
Empty Bowl: Fresh, green, sencha in the summer, cooked green apples
Thoughts: I can tell it’s very good, I’d suspect this is one of their best performing/selling matcha’s.

Group 3: Saemidori vs Ujimidori vs Yamatomidori

Saemidori:
Dry Aroma: Khaki, baked tuilles, eggy cookies, cheap asian vanilla flavor cookie sticks, old cardboard
Initial water: fresh, fruity, powerful green, kiwi + lime? or watermelon + lemon juice?
Usucha: ?
Usucha Flavor: Initially bitter, doesn’t really work up to anything, fizzles off to nothing. Coats teeth with a powdery grit.
Empty Bowl: Fruity, sweet + sour
Thoughts: Great aroma

Ujimidori:
Dry Aroma: Green –> old books? thin paper (think: bible),
Initial water: cooked fruit, jammy, raspberry/strawberry, cloudberry?
Usucha: cooked fruit, jammy, red berries
Usucha Flavor: Bold, bitter, flavor skips the introduction and hammers hard in mid-palate, quite assertive but ultimately simple. Nothing lingers in terms of acidity or astringency.
Empty Bowl: Sweet yellow, jammy
Thoughts: One of the best smelling matcha’s in the set

Yamatomidori:
Dry Aroma: Sweet… paint?
Initial water: ?
Usucha: Midway food, the aroma seems very distant and elusive
Usucha Flavor: Simple, has good structure (beginning, middle, end) beginning bitter, moving to acidic, into a long finish. There is a great balance across all aspects. The problem is the flavor is shallow.
Empty Bowl: cooked fruit, yellow
Thoughts: Component…. (will elaborate below)

Conclusions based on the teas above:

*tilts head to the side* is single cultivar matcha a good thing? After drinking the Yamatomidori I had a feeling that these teas were boxed, packaged/presented, and set up in this unspecified ‘tasting order’ to force the drinker to realize that: pros and cons of each varietal exist, and that by blending them together you can create balanced superior teas.

Excercise 2: Create harmonious blends of matcha based on findings from Exercise 1, support your thoughts and reasoning.

Since it’s so fresh in my brain, and perhaps its just the way I’m thinking today. I could clearly see that Saemidori has a strong start, weak middle, and weak finish. Ujimidori has a weak start, strong middle, weak finish. Yamatomidori isn’t particularly weak in the start or middle, but it does have a strong finish. Looking at my notes I decided to blend an usucha with 0.6 Saemidori, 0.8g of Ujimidori, and 0.6g of Yamatomidori with 60ml of water. My goal was to create an usucha with a strong sense of ripe, fruity flavors and bold aromatics which doesn’t lack structure or finish. The usucha was completely successful in being what I wanted. The only complaint I have with it is that it doesn’t have the intensity I want. I suppose that is because it is ‘usucha’ (thin matcha) instead of koicha (thick matcha).

The teas I described with notes of ‘pistachio’ were blended with the intent to create a powerful, deep flavored koicha. The recipe was 2g of Kanayamidori as the base, 1g of Gokou, and 1g of Okuyutaka. Kanayamidori was selected as the base because of its overall impression of density/richness of flavor. Gokou and Okuyutaka were added in equal parts perhaps only to keep it simple. This lack of purpose is regrettable, however, the end result was again, quite on point. A sensory overload. There is so much to contemplate here: It was like drinking melted cacao liquor, with bolts of sour and bitter flavors zipping around from the time its in the mouth all throughout the finish. Very heavy, very oily, very fatty in a ‘nut butter’ way. The only issue was that it wasn’t deep. Considering that none of the components are deep, perhaps it makes total sense. If I think like that though, none of the 10 matcha’s in this set were deep. I have had, and prefer matcha that has a deep, dark, ‘yin’ flavor — where does that come from? This is the next important thing to find out.

I’ve had … 12g of matcha in the previous 2 hours. I think I’ll stop there today. Blends for another day will be:

‘Chocolate’: Okumidori + Samidori + Asahi
‘Summer’: Asahi + Yabukita + Samidori
‘Superior Balance’: Okuyutaka + Gokou + Ujimidori

A final thought, because today, perhaps my sentiments regarding the value I place on mono-cultivars in tea has changed. With the exception of Gokou and Okuyutaka, none of these matcha’s were really balanced or interesting enough to stand on their own. With my very humble attempts at blending to create harmony, I have demonstrated that I can make superior finished teas by blending with my new-found knowledge and experience. This poses a question that has no correct answer; and one that other industries have struggled with for many decades. Single Malt or Blended whiskey? Mixed bean or monovarietal coffee? Monovarietal or blended wines? Who cares I guess.

A few days later I was playing around with the matcha again. I blended my ‘chocolate’ idea into creation, first as an usucha, and subsequently with its failure, a koicha.

Usucha: (60ml water)
Asahi .8g
Okumidori .6g
Samidori .6g
Thoughts: Balance is good, it has some finish. It’s not interesting, hopefully would be better as koicha.

Koicha: (40ml water)
Asahi 1.5g
Okumidori 1.2g
Samidori 1.3g
Thoughts: It’s closer to ‘chocolate’ — the goal. It doesn’t have the roasted/nutty notes of chocolate that are obvious especially in milk chocolates. Overall its quite dark, more like cacao liquor than dark chocolate honestly. It still is quite simple. It has the bitterness of dark chocolate above 90% cacao. Very rich, thick texture though that much is to be expected. Flavor-wise it’s on the mild side of koicha.

So back to my train of thought: Why does some matcha taste deeper than others? Is it a longer shading time? stronger degree of shading? Does tencha go through hi-ire at the end? I think it does. Is it a longer hi-ire, or perhaps hotter? Is it the mineral composition of the ground which the tea bushes absorb?

The result of the ‘Superior Balance’ blend was quite interesting, though I still see room for improvement.

‘Superior Balance’ soon to be known as ‘Pilgrimage’
1.9g of Okuyutaka
0.6g of Gokou
1.5g of Ujimidori.

The reason to use such high amounts of Okuyutaka and Ujimidori was to get a highly aromatic result; Gokou was used for the powerful acidic high notes it shows in the finish. In future blends, I’ll use more Okuyutaka and less Ujimidori because Ujimidori’s bitterness was too prominent in this blend.

This blend was fascinating to me, and while drinking it, I feel it caused my mind to wander a lot. While drinking the tea I thought it [the tea itself] was determined to accomplish something important in and of itself, but wholly abstruse to the outsider [me]. I gave it the nickname ‘Pilgrimage’ after the fact (while cleaning up). As I was rinsing out my bowl with hot water, I drank the residual tea and felt the fragrance of frigid mountain air trapped in the hot slurry of tea.

More importantly:
The matcha was interesting because it had 2 humps of flavor to get excited about, what I mean by that might be best explained in an image:

1: Flavor unfolds slowly on the tongue with a light bitterness
2: Opens up with profound flavors and more forceful bitterness, then dips
3: Rises again with more flavor, reinforced with a resonating acidity
4: Fades out with simple flavors and bitterness, similar to how it started

The next ‘Pilgrimage’ will be
2.2g Okuyutaka
0.6g Gokou
1.2g Ujimidori

Perhaps with the improved version, I can cut down on the bitterness while maintaining the overall harmony. Maybe I’ll be able to get more out of it aromatically as well, as the first trial was ‘fresh’ and ‘vibrant’ but limited to those simple terms.

‘Pilgrimage #2’ –> ‘Hebi no Michi’
2.2g Okuyutaka
0.6g Gokou
1.2g Ujimidori

Aromas:
Roasted notes of Dango, especially the sauce?
Cold mountain air
Deep nutty sweetness
Green

Flavors:
The flavor is super balanced. There is just enough weight and bitterness to keep the acidic notes from standing out. It all comes and goes in harmony with an extremely long drawn out flavor. Most of which I’d say is build up and not finish. The finish is rather ordinary, while the build-up is extra-ordinary.

The name ‘Hebi no Michi’ is a homage to the ‘Snake Way’ of Dragon Ball Z. A long and winding path above the clouds without a whole lot at the end (arguably). From a judge’s point of view, I’d say this would score better than the initial ‘Pilgrimage’ due to the balance, though on the other hand, it’s less exciting. There’s less to mentally attach to therefore looking for something to say about it becomes tedious. It’s like looking at an impeccable celadon piece of pottery. What can you say?