This special sencha blend has been prepared for us by one of Japan’s foremost practitioners of the art of tea, a tea master from Kyoto. (Tea masters act as tea “sommeliers” and blenders.) This elegant and restrained creation unfolds into a rich flavor – the experience is akin to the deep, complex experience of Kyoto’s traditional kaiseki cuisine.

Okumidori leaves from Kyoto, the same type used in matcha and gyokuro, serve as the base, onto which have been added finest grade green teas from Miyazaki and Kagoshima Prefectures.

The blender, a veteran tea master who samples several thousand tea varieties a year, has brought together only the finest ingredients that met his vision for this green tea’s flavor. A rare item alive with the spirit and traditions of Kyoto sencha.

Like other agricultural products, green tea production varies greatly by the region and producer. Even the same type of leaf can manifest marked differences in flavor and other characteristics. Japanese culinary styles differ in fundamental ways in the East and West of the country, and a similar tendency can be seen in green tea from the respective regions.
Teas produced in Eastern Japan in places like Shizuoka exhibit a bold, “masculine” flavor, while teas from Kyoto and other parts of Western Japan have a “feminine,” gentle taste.

Okumidori
This excellent varietal is obtained by crossing the yabukita varietal with Shizuoka native strain no. 16, a variety of green tea plant carefully designated from within Shizuoka’s range of native tea varieties. It offers a bold, bright color and mildly sweet flavor, with little bitterness and astringency and no strong aftertaste. These features make it a high-grade sencha tea, but it is also used widely for matcha, gyokuro, and other preparations.(Many farmers count on the cultivar as the Yabukita second.)

Yabukita：
Yabukita is a cultivar bred from carefully selected native Japanese green tea strains. This superb varietal accounts for close to 75% of Japanese green tea production. Noted for its rich, deep umami, modest balance of bitterness and astringency, and elegant aroma.。

Blends are generally used in order to standardize the flavor of a mass-produced harvest over a sustained period. By contrast, this sencha blend brings together different components in order to achieve a complex flavor balance otherwise, impossible with a single leaf type.

As an agriculture product subject to the vicissitudes of nature, some variation in quality and flavor is inevitable in green tea production; rather than trying to standardize the crop, taking that variation as a positive and carefully combining elements, as seen here, yields a balanced yet complex flavor profile.

When working with the finest grades of green tea, the particularities of each tea type are front and center. Only veteran tea masters can harness those sharp differences and harmonize them into a balanced tea that achieves the taste they seek.