Saemidori Cultivar
Saemidori means "clear green", and the name is honest: vivid colour, natural sweetness, very low astringency. Crossed in 1969 at the Makurazaki research station in Kagoshima — Yabukita as mother, the sweet Asatsuyu as father — and registered in 1990 as Tea Norin No. 40, it has become the cultivar of choice for hand-picked premium lots.
This shelf shows one cultivar across two crafts: hand-picked Saemidori matcha from Nishio and from Yame, and Hon Gyokuro from Hoshino village made from the same plant. Matcha and gyokuro are processed differently from the same shaded leaf — tasting them side by side is the cleanest way to understand what the cultivar itself contributes.
The full profile — breeding history, taste architecture, and why Saemidori and Samidori are two different plants — is in our Saemidori guide; the family tree lives in the cultivar guide. All single-cultivar teas: here.
